Paperwork

Almost 2 weeks in to my first clinical rotation, and I’ve come to a sad realization. There is a lot of paperwork associated with treating a patient. Writing progress notes are by far the number one complaint I hear from every PT that is in the clinic where I’m located, and since I have started writing my own (under close supervision from my CI), I feel their pain. There is a push for everyone’s medical records to become electronic and “stored” centrally, which a study by the Department of Health Human Services found to be effective in cutting medical costs by avoiding errors and improving the delivery of preventative care. It’s easy to talk about it, but according to this article in the New York Times, implementation is a little more difficult. The government stepped in, however, last week by approving a $150 million Medicare project to provide incentives for switching to electronic medical records, and both Google and Microsoft have both begun to provide web-based consumer controlled health records. Hopefully, by the time I graduate Progress Notes will have progressed to the 21st Century and documentation will only be a few mouse clicks away.