Medical Scribes – A new Rx for the EMR?

Recently an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported physicians are hiring medical scribes to follow them and input data (chart) in the new electronic medical record. “The new record-keeping systems, which are touted as a way to improve efficiency and quality, slow down emergency medicine physicians so much that the doctors are hiring young people like Fera to input data for them.” http://bit.ly/PhillyInqMedScribeArticle While the article suggested that the new scribes created a great job for aspiring medical students- for those of us who work with usability and safety in electronic records this comes as a sad commentary.
While we certainly don’t want to put people out of work- hiring a scribe to be a physician proxy in entering vital patient information forces a bigger question- “Why can’t the physician chart in the new EMR? “. The answer may lie within the ability of EMR vendors to construct software that is “usable”. While the word usable seems simple and a “no-brainer” EHR usability is not a simple concept. Usability refers to how useful, usable, and satisfying a system is for the users to accomplish goals in the work domain by performing certain sequences of tasks. Clearly if the physician can’t use the EHR in their work flow in the Emergency Room without also needing a medical scribe – it is missing the mark on usability. A system is usable if it is easy to learn, easy to use, and error-resistant. As healthcare costs increase – and EMRs are a large purchase for a hospital- shouldn’t EMRs be usable without having to hire additional clinical support personnel? A worthy goal for us all.

What are your thoughts? Let me hear from you.

Jiajie Zhang, PhD
SHARPC Principal Investigator and NCCD Co-Director

SHARPC in the NEWS

Jiajie Zhang, PhD, PI and Co-Director of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare, has recently been featured in Healthcare IT News about electronic health record (EHR) usability. Click on the following links to read more about EHR usability.

EMR usability seen lacking

Usability is key for EHR adoption

Seven questions with Jiajie Zhang

SMART Apps for Health $5,000 Challenge

[From another SHARP - SMART headquartered at Harvard]
Make your contribution to the health of the nation by creating an innovative health app!

SMART (www.smartplatforms.org) is one of four Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. SMART was conceived to address the real-world need for responsiveness and innovation in health information technology by empowering existing electronic medical records (EHRs) and personally-controlled health records (PCHRs) to accept substitutable apps.

Currently, innovation in health informatics is limited by disparate vendor APIs and ambiguous data standards. Deploying an application against multiple vendor systems requires massive customization efforts that don¹t scale. SMART provides a common API to access patient records, fueling apps with rich, unambiguous data. This will open up the market of health IT to a new cadre of developers who can write a SMART app once and deploy it inside multiple EMRs and PCHRs.

Our objective is to lower the barriers to creating apps for health, so that you, the developer, can focus on your great ideas!

If you're interested in learning more, supporting us, and participating, go to http://challenge.gov/challenges/134

NCCD at UTHealth mentioned in Healthcare IT News

SHARPC (NCCD) was mentioned in the March 9th issue of  Healthcare IT News as David Blumenthal, MD; the National Coordinator for Health IT discussed Stage 2 meaningful use and SHARPC's role in developing valid and reliable tests for EHR usability.

http://bit.ly/gRneQZ

Electronic Health Record (EHR) Usability and Interface Design Short Course

The three day Certificate Short Course on EHR Usability and Interface Design provides advanced training to team leaders, architects and managers of EHR implementation projects in designing and developing EHRs that improve patient safety, efficiency and user satisfaction.

Please see the brochure for the Short Course at
http://www.uthouston.edu/nccd/Jan2011UsabilityInfo.pdf


Details
Dates: January 19-21, 2011 (three days)
Time: 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Short Course Cost: $1,500 (Includes continental breakfast lunch, and afternoon snack as well as all instructional materials (provided on a flash drive at beginning of course.)

Location: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)
University Center Tower (UCT)
7000 Fannin, 14th Floor, Room 1414
Houston, TX 77030  Google Map

Register By Check: Please visit
http://www.uthouston.edu/nccd/Jan2011ShortCourse.pdf

Register By Credit Card: Please visit
http://www.uthouston.edu/usabilityshortcourse

Who should attend?

Those involved in designing, developing, maintaining and implementing EHRs including:

• EHR developers and programmers
• EHR designers
• EHR software quality assurance personnel
• Information Technologists charged with assisting the EHR acquisition process
• Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals
• Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows

Introducing SHARPC to EHR Vendors

What:  Introducing SHARPC to EHR Vendors

When:  November 2, 2010

Time:  1pm – 2pm Central Standard Time

Delivery method: WebEx

Come learn about the exciting opportunities of working with  the SHARPC program to improve your EMR systems! SHARPC is an ONC funded Research and Development Program focusing on Patient-Centered Cognitive Support for the adoption and meaningful use of HIT.

Meeting invite with further instructions to follow.

For more information, please contact:

Joseph Hinojosa

Administrative Coordinator

National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare

School of Biomedical Informatics

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Joseph.A.Hinojosa@uth.tmc.edu

713.486.0123 office

713.486.01177 fax

www.sharpc.org

                                         

Welcome

We've created this blog to inform you about the activities of  SHARPC.
We will post information about the ongoing activities here at SHARPC and offer you opportunities to be notified by Twitter and FaceBook, if you choose.
Here is some background information about SHARPC.
An Overview of SHARPC  (http://bit.ly/bZcDbd)
Please contact Paul Wood at paul.w.wood@uth.tmc.edu for more information.