OK, I’ll admit it: I had no idea. I thought that the whining and griping by other doctors about EMR was just petulance by a group of people who like to be in charge and who resist change. I thought that they were struggling because of their lack of insight into the real benefits of digital records, instead focusing on their insignificant immediate needs. I thought they were a bunch of dopes.
Yep. I am a jerk.
My transition to a new practice gave me the opportunity to dump my old EMR (with all the deficiencies I’ve come to hate) and get a new, more current system.* I figured that someone like me would be able to learn and master a new EMR with ease. After all, I do understand about data schema, structured and unstructured data, I know about MEDCIN, SNOMED, and HL-7 interfaces. Gosh darn it, I am a card-carrying member of the EMR elite! A new product should be a piece of cake! I’ll put my credentials at the bottom of this post, in case you are interested.**
So, imagine my shock when I was confused and befuddled as I attempted to learn this new product. How could someone who could claim a bunch of product enhancements as my personal suggestions have any problem with a different system? The insight into the answer to this sheds light onto one of the basic problems with EMR systems.
Problem 1: Different Languages
As I struggled to figure out my new system, it occurred to me that I felt a lot like a person learning a new language. Here I was: an expert in German linguistics and I was now having to learn Japanese. Both are systems of written and spoken code that accomplish the same task: communication of data from one person to another. Both do so using many of the same basic elements: subjects, objects, nouns, verbs. Both are learned by children and spoken by millions of people. But both are very, very different in many ways.