Charles Krauthammer, political commentator, author and medical doctor board certified in psychiatry, writes in the Washington Post that America's doctors are "deeply demoralized" by the current medical atmosphere. "Incessant interference" from insurers, lawyers and government is destroying any personal autonomy they have had in the practice of medicine.
The biggest complaint is with the EHR (electronic health record) which mandated that medical offices go paperless in January 2015. The result is that your doctor now spends more time per visit looking at and interacting with his computer, "scrolling, tapping and typing" than with you, the patient. One study found that emergency room doctors spend 44% of their time filling out forms, instead of taking care of the sick and injured.
When we see our primary care doctor now we receive in the mail a summary of our visit a few days later. The interviewing nurse had to make our history fit the program so the details are almost always incorrect. The boxes to be checked do not include every possible complaint, remark or variant so the facts have to be fudged a little to a lot. By the time our chart reaches the doctor our physical complaints are reduced to check marks in boxes. There is no place for a narrative that previously revealed so much about the patient. There is no place for a physician who listens attentively and examines the patient thoroughly.
Dr. Krauthammer opines that the government rationale is that electronization worked for the banking
industry so it should work for medicine as a business. So far it isn't.
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