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0 pointspfisherman3y ago0 comments

> IT systems that they have to use were designed by people who have not talked with the workers who use them. They may have been designed with laws and compliance in mind. Nurses aren't the people who choose or pay for these systems. But, they use them a lot (maybe the most) and it's obvious they weren't taken into account when designing the UX. It's maddening for them.

I can speak to this a bit. After interviewing lots of hospital workers, I can tell you that the hospital quality people love EHRs because the reporting functions actually work. Previously, it was not possible to measure how well the hospital was doing and convince the doctors to improve practices - think washing hands before doing examinations.

EHRs are shitty because (1) the big players are entrenched - they are already implemented and the cost / disruption to switch to a new EHR is extremely high, and (2) the market isn’t big enough to justify the level of investment it will take to break through - Apple made more money from one product (AirPods) last year than all the EHR vendors combined.

At this point my hope is that mobile devices and meta-EHRs are able to crack this.

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urthor3y ago

Apple made that money from selling Airpods to the entire globe however.

Part of EHR's problems are definitely that the market is only one single country, the United States.

Master_Odin3y ago

And even within that single country, each state and hospital then has their own requirements around EHRs. This ends up being my biggest issue with EHR is that you need to support infinite flexibility for all the unique snowflakes that exist. I'm convinced healthcare would improve in this country if the federal government standardized all of this to a single setup. This also includes the mess that is EHR in EMS.

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