Joining the trend of patient goal-oriented electronic health record

Tino Martí
 

Primary care in our country is in a good situation regarding the use of electronic medical records. The digitization of medical records began at the end of the last century and was fully deployed in the first decade of this. Such is the progress of the clinical stations used today that they are already crying out for a technological, functional, and usability update, but changing the system is complicated and very expensive, so it's easy to expect that change will only occur when the technological version will no longer justify itself.

The patient as a key agent for the exchange of health information in Europe

Tino Martí

Health care between the countries of the European Union is regulated by Directive 2011/24/EU of the European Parliament and the Council, on the application of the rights of patients in cross-border healthcare, published on March 9, 2011, One of the objectives of the directive is to regulate access to patient information. The exchange of health information is important to ensuring quality care and allowing continuity and coordination beyond the borders of the different health systems existing in Europe, whether at national or regional level. 

More time to generate quality conversations with patients?

Anna Sant

The fight of the click in the consultation

Two studies published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine and Health Affairs compared the time that doctors spend with the patient in consultation with the time they spend with the computer. Jordi Varela analyzed these results in his post dedicated to Danielle Ofri, a Bellevue Hospital doctor and professor at the NYU School of Medicine, who said, referring to the electronic medical record (EHR), that "The beast is insatiable and every time it needs more and more food. It ends up claiming all the time I dedicate to human interaction and, given that I ought to, I have to stay late, just to satisfy its cravings.” Both studies concluded that the time spent on the screen is longer than that dedicated to the patient.

The excesses of image diagnostics

The practice of modern medicine is subject to much pressure from the use of diagnostic imaging technologies, many of which are truly dazzling for the eyes of clinicians and patients and, as a result, health budgets are constantly increasing. This being the case, everyone agrees that more professional debate should be generated to put the matter in its place and avoid the excesses that damage resources, irradiate people and don’t add value to clinical reasoning.

The orientation to the patient: a health service as a "service"

Sophia Schlette

One year ago, while I was still working for Kaiser Permanente, I was invited to give a talk on primary care concepts in an adult education academy in the vicinity of Berlin. I thought I would present a theoretical framework of evaluation, based on evidence, consisting of ten dimensions, similar, but not identical, to the ten building blocks of Bodenheimer already presented in this blog. I arrived on the previous afternoon and saw the participants with a certain air of frustration in being saturated with so much theory. The models and concepts of the talk had little to do with the experience in the German medical practice or with the doctor-patient relationship in real life. In Germany, if you go to the doctor, you have to take half a day off. Wait up to 40 minutes, despite having an appointment just to have 5 precious minutes with the doctor. Typically, neither the doctor nor his employees will give any explanation, nor apologize for the delay. There is no electronic medical record everywhere and where there is, the doctor begins to read it only when the patient is present: “Here’s the recipe. Have a good day. Goodbye” This is the German system, as we know it since childhood.