Regardless of where we practice medicine, it is up to us as individual physicians to ensure the highest quality of care that we can deliver to our patients. At each location, the demography and cultural composition of our patients have revealed different approaches to language barriers, self-understanding of disease, and even the perception of pain.
As a physician, I wrote a recent essay that describes the obstacles I believe most significantly impede the adoption of standards of healthcare delivery in these diverse settings.
I have obtained Six Sigma and LEAN certification and patient safety curricula, and published work on outcomes-based research studies and clinical trials on informatics tools in peer-reviewed journals.
Perioperative Workflow Optimization with Lean management system
Continuous Practice Improvement with Six Sigma DMAIC
At the end of a long day in the operating room or clinic, your doctor goes back to piles of paperwork, billing and charting. Your doctor will delay dinner plans with their spouse and play time with their kids, just to dot some I's and cross some T's. .
Even in the post-emergence era of digital healthcare, the burden of documentation falls on the physician. It has only gotten worse, and for some valid reasons:
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👉Increasing patient volume with better access to healthcare.
👉Increasing surgical caseload as patients seek elective surgery at older ages.
👉Increased mobility of today's doctor, providing patient care in multiple locations
👉Priorities. We take care of our patients and fellow healthcare team members first before picking up the pen or clicking a mouse.
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The majority of reasons are preventable; however, "slow adopter" have been able to slow in this culture change effectively.
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😨Incongruent documentation practices leading to redundancy of recorded information, or missed information needing to be reconciled. These delays affect billing and speedy entering of time sensitive data into the patient's chart.
😨Incomplete transition from paper to electronic health records. for example, documentation and imaging will be in one format, while patient orders will be in a different format. This hurts patient care, primarily because few doctors ever look at both.
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It is time that we take a stand. Fight redundancy, fight inefficiency.
Aalap Shah, MD, is a board certified anesthesiologist, specializing in general adult and pediatric anesthesiology.
