Doctors Input 50,000-70,000 Orders Yearly Without Error

We’ve mentioned about the need for help for physicians at the inpatient and clinic level because of the increased EMR and administrative burden. We are not paid extra for these tasks.

On the inpatient side every admitted patient requires between 50-70 orders to be input. This is one thing that has been made easier by the EMR and we are thankful for that. No more scribbling down repetitively on order sheets.

I admit between 6-8 patients nightly, let’s say about 1/2 of the year is spent at work, 182 days. That is 1092 to 1456 patients per year, or 54,600 to 72,800 orders placed on the low end if we assume 50 orders per patient.

Even though EMR has helped with order input, that is a lot of orders and keystrokes to input with the expectation of low or nonexistent error. Don’t believe me? Allow some small “harmless” errors to slip: team assignment error, consulting the wrong service for central line placement, etc. You will hear about it from the chief sooner rather than later.

The more serious errors actually impact patient morbidity, mortality. These are the ones that hurt. They impact our collective physician psyche as well.

Looking at it purely by the numbers, physicians are under extremely high pressure to perform as we optimize patients for stroke, htn, mi, etc. Do any action >50,000 times and there will be errors. Extrapolating these numbers to the total number of physicians in the US and the world is sobering.

Phrasefire Medical was born out of this unrealistic expectation. Each user customizes the language model platform so it is tailor made to their needs.

Check us out at www.phrasefire.com

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