Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 751 posts

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#251

Post by closeparen »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

The big reason EMR is so overbearing is to optimize billing… as far as economic statistics, that should show up as positive even if less patient care is actually delivered.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#252

Post by spikefromspace »

My 2 cents (although a bit of a salty take): In my last 3 roles, rewards like promotions go to those who create their own personal brand and win the popularity contest. While sometimes that correlates with actual productivity but often does not. So often I see folks do the bare minimum in these work cultures which seem to be getting more prevalent.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#253

Post by QuercusMax »

conductr wrote: post #110
lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. It was to have a record that is standard, digital, transferable, etc. Doctors fought it as long as they could because they knew what it meant for them. I remember pretty early demos in early/mid 2000s when I was doing some clinical grunt work in college. I had written some software to make my department’s life easier so I was offered up as the hospital’s…

"Fun" fact: the Therac-25 tragedy was in part caused by this type of usage - folks who know it so well they just blast through the screens from memory. But the software in question wasn't resilient to this use-case, and apparently resulted in an inconsistent state.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#254

Post by prlyons »

conductr wrote: post #110
lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

I don’t think productivity was ever the goal of this software. It was to have a record that is standard, digital, transferable, etc. Doctors fought it as long as they could because they knew what it meant for them. I remember pretty early demos in early/mid 2000s when I was doing some clinical grunt work in college. I had written some software to make my department’s life easier so I was offered up as the hospital’s…

Another reason is to satisfy insurers increasing demands for documentation to backup billing.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#255

Post by covidiot5 »

StillBored wrote: post #249
yamtaddle wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also fought it because they didn't go to medical school and survive residency to fill out forms all damn day—and they didn't used to have to, they had staff for that. Then the computerized systems "replaced" that staff but all that really means is they cut the human time needed low enough that full-time workers weren't needed, but didn't eliminate it, so now that's another thing doctors have to do themselves. AF…

But the doctors almost always were taking notes anyway. My step father (A doctor) fought a losing battle against electronic records because he had _decades_ of paper records stored in the "records" room of his office. That was largely the responsibility of the front desk to pull the patients records and have them ready for him to read/check before seeing the patient. Then clean them up and refile them. Long term pati…

They’re taking notes with cheap pencils and paper! We should sell them an complex, messy to build, fleet of machines!

It’s like cutting off a head when stitching a cut on the leg was the problem.

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#257

Post by [deleted] »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#258

Post by [deleted] »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#259

Post by pastaguy1 »

kps wrote: post #148
Retric wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That documentation time is largely driven by the insurance industry which was really painful before these systems. It’s almost shocking how much more productive doctors are inside the VA.

> It’s almost shocking how much more productive doctors are inside the VA. Cerner has a contract to fix that.

What?

Re: U.S. workers have gotten less productive – no one is sure why

#260

Post by kewrkewm53 »

lkrubner wrote: post #88

I've read that doctors now spend as much as 50% of their time documenting their work. Companies such as Epic, which provide the software that hospitals use to build databases of patient data, have been big winners in the new world of hospitals-depending-on-software. But did the doctors become more productive? By almost any measure, they became less productive. People in tech keep thinking more tech will solve problem…

I agree. Here in Finland the public healthcare organization in capital region and surrounding areas chose Epic as supplier of their new system. It has been a disaster, massive complaints from doctors about how unproductive it is to use, and also some issues that endanger patient safety. Apparently it's also programmed with MUMPS, which doesn't exactly sound a great idea in 21th century.

I'm not sure whether this choice was a case of incompetence or corruption, but the end result is clearly a giant waste of money. Maybe it generates a lot of data, but efficiency would be way more important for an organization like this which is chronically underfunded and staffed.

Post reply on HN