Government Is Forcing Doctors to Spend More Time on Data Entry and Less with Their Patients

National Review ^ | 05/29/2015 | Charles Krauthhammer

[SeekAndFind]

About a decade ago, a doctor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating conditions of clinical practice. “How did you know to get out of medicine in 1978?” he asked with a smile. “I didn’t,” I replied.

“I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I’d chosen the wrong vocation.”

I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class’s 40th-reunion report and reading some of the entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends, and the considerable achievements of their professional lives. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment, almost demoralization, with what medical practice had become.

The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to “provider.”

As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers . . . progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic-health-records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.

[semimojo]

You should talk to physicians in FL. According to you they are misinformed about government regulations controlling their record keeping.

Well, I don't know any FL docs but here are three (among dozens) of companies offering to do exactly what you say is forbidden by the ACA:

Scribe America
EMR-Scribes
Medscape

Here's a nice description of how scribes can be used:

American Health Information Management Association

These services may not be economically viable for the docs you talk to but that doesn't mean that their use is prohibited.

[semimojo]

Please check out the links in post 61.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Taxman]

I have an appointment with my Doctor next week. I’ll ask her again and get back to you.

[Amagi]

Not only this, but I was just thinking today about all the time I have to waste complying with an endless deluge of government mandated b.s.
Not limited to filling out forms monthly, plus the time and money wasted writing checks to an ever greedy bureaucracy and Big Government at every level.
It is already beyond absurd and only becoming rapidly worse.