My nurses do the paperwork of ordering so making this smooth in AC is tough. I just want her to be able to click a patient and order the CBC and CT Abd/Pelvis and send it on (which she can). Then when she saves it after faxing it to the lab/radiology, it would save in a nice spot so when the results came back, we could reconcile them (which it doesn't).
Not that easy for her to do. Lots of forwarding the chart to get it saved into the chart, picking people to send it to, entering in the diagnosis in the correct spot if the encounter note hasn't been done yet, etc. I think it tries too hard to be integrated into the note but it doesn't do it very well. Plus, I don't necessarily need an encounter note to order something.
It's close and doable as most things are. Just not like regular practice work flow. I'm having to adjust our workflow again to integrate this orders section.
The attractiveness of AC is that it is inexpensive and easy to fit into a regular workflow. Some of this is getting away from that.
To get EMRs to take a good hold, the EMR companies will have to take away the "menial" tasks out of the doctor's hands and put them back in the nurses hands like they have always been. Most docs who use paper will "tell" their nurse to "get a CBC and a CT Abd/Pelvis on Ms. Doe" and off they go. With EMRs, we become typists, order entry clerks, medication order entry clerks, transcriptionists, etc while my staff sit around and watch me do it all.
Wow, that wasn't supposed to be a rant. EMRs will have to learn to make their best effort of keeping the workflow as close to paper as possible if they want to be the most successful EMR.
