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0 pointsSwizec3y ago0 comments

> about half of her time is spent filling out forms and jumping through bureaucratic hoops

I was reading research on this recently because I’m working on an EHR software. The cited study concluded that physicians spend about 15% of their time face-to-face with patients and about 17% filling out documentation. For interns it’s worse with 11% time with patients and 22% writing things down.

This was in Principles of Health Interoperability, a book from ~2016.

On the bright side, all this documentation has been shown to literally save lives. Not sure it’s doing as much for us coders.

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octokatt3y ago

Hilariously, the rates are even better if you have a medical transcriber in the room, taking notes for the doctor so they can focus.

... as long as we can get patients to speak in the normal way they would with a doctor, instead of being inhibited because of the second person in the room.

marcosdumay3y ago

> as long as we can get patients to speak in the normal way they would with a doctor, instead of being inhibited because of the second person in the room.

Now... That looks like a place where AI can help.

0xdeadbeefbabe3y ago

> all this documentation has been shown to literally save lives

The docs saved them.

didgetmaster3y ago

As I said earlier, some processes are beneficial. Properly documenting something can help doctors do their job correctly.

The same is true for programming. Having good comments, unit tests, and other things that can sometimes seem tedious while we do them; can actually save us time and help us write better code.

It comes down to having the right balance of process where it helps instead of gets in the way. The trouble with bureaucracies is they never know when to stop growing.

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