Why doctors quit, Chapter 2

 My argument is simple. If electronic records are such a great boon — as I believe they eventually will be — they will be adopted over time as the benefits begin to exceed costs. Let the market work. Let doctors breathe. And while you’re at it, drop the Medicare penalty.

Charles Krauthammer

 

"I rarely do follow-up columns. I’m averaging one every 10 years. And while my last such exercise resulted in a written apology from the White House (for accusing me of making up facts over its removal of Churchill’s bust), today’s is not a complaint. It’s merely a recognition that the huge response elicited by last week’s column, "Why doctors quit " warrants both rebuttal and clarification.

"Physicians who responded tended to agree with my claim that doctors are being driven out of the profession by the intrusions, interferences, regulations, mandates, constraints and sundry other degradations of their vocation that are the result of the bureaucratization of medicine. Chief among them is the imposition of electronic health records (EHR).

"I’ve also heard from people who notice how much attention their doctor must devote to filling out EHR boxes on a computer screen rather than to engaging with them during an office visit. To the point where a heretofore-unheard-of profession has been invented — the “scribe” who just enters the data so the doctor can actually do doctoring." . . .  Full article here.