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

451–460 of 751 posts

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

#451

Post by drewbeck »

nradov wrote: post #155
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…

Some healthcare provider organizations now employ medical scribes who follow physicians around and do all their EHR data entry. This is expensive, but can be cost effective because then the physicians have more time to perform billable procedures.

Ah this is great to hear. I been thinking about this approach for a while. Great to hear it’s a Thing.

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

#452

Post by drited »

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…

Sounds like Bloomberg.

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

#453

Post by deadbunny »

StillBored wrote: post #242
conductr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMHO, this is because the people writting GUI's these days are mostly incompetent, or hamstrung by "web" technologies. Early GUI's didn't have the problem you describe because they were designed as discovery mechanisms to the underlying function. AKA, the idea was that after clicking File->Save a dozen times you would remember the keyboard accelerators displayed on the right hand side of the menu. Or if nothing else,…

In my experience the rise of GUIs over TUIs they lost the command buffering. If you knew what you were doing with a well designed TUI you could hit a sequence of keys that would be buffered and "replayed" as the next screen(s) loaded. Hit a sequence of commands in a GUI and they'll just get lost after the first one as the app/website loads.

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

#454

Post by FredPret »

cm42 wrote: post #123
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…

"Just a billing platform with some patient stuff tacked on" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_tSFJsjsw

Zdogg, MD made my day!

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

#455

Post by rajeshp1986 »

It is surprising how no one is talking about the productivity loss due to social media & entertainment. I feel most people now spend a considerable amount of time on social media, entertainment on both personal & work time. I am not saying companies should impose restrictions on employees but we are living in a generation of 24x7 entertainment. We are definitely less creative and productive compared to workers 20 years ago.

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

#456

Post by raydiatian »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #239
raydiatian wrote: post #233

> no one knows why $7.25

My local Aldi is advertising $16.50/hr + benefits. Average rent for a 1BR in the general area is $1000-1200ish. As for me personally, I don't think I could be more productive if I tried. I finish work and then look to pick something up - are there isn't anything ready. If I try to make something ready, people want everything run past a committee to gain consensus. Twice in the past 6 months, I've spent 2 weeks develo…

I mean $7.25 is completely inaccurate, and that’s my bad. What I really mean to say here is that it feels like the whole non-C-level part of the work force is disincentivized to try hard, because C-level pay is hyper-inflated. Workforce get stiffed on ownership of the companies they participate in. Completely.

1) the first start up I ever joined, I ended up owning 10% of the platform and grinding frequent 70+ hr work weeks. I desperately wanted to spread my wings and make suggestions (you know, career advancement type bullshit) but I was consistently treated like I had only been hired because there was a talent shortage, and that I was expected to follow orders and shut the fuck up. Execs sold the company 3 years later for $50M. I got $6,000 from the deal.

2) Amazon is a multi trillion dollar company, with huge talent sourcing issues. Why? Employees are grist for the mill. When I interviewed, beginning SE’s were salary capped and offered a tops of $40k in stock options that vested over 4 years. Most devs don’t last more than 2.

These can’t be unique stories. I’m of the opinion that money and control need a fierce decoupling. I’d give a shit about implementing big visions if I were treated like it matters that I care and if I were presented a fair stake in the company. Until then, I’m going to worry about pursuing my personal projects more often than not.

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

#457

Post by tick_tock_tick »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #363
baxtr wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficult part of it is: for some people it is literally nothing. We had it now for the fourth time since 2020 even though we’re properly vaccinated and careful as much as life permits. It’s a bit worse than a cold but much better for than the flu. So, yes, for us life just goes on with COVID. No need to change anything.

There are many, many scientists who are attempting to warn us that isn’t nothing. The literature is piling up. Paper: Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-021-01113-x Paper: “Excess risk for acute myocardial infarction mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic” — https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.28187 Paper: “p53/NF-kB Balance…

All of these seem to say the risks of complications are extremely rare? I mean it's endemic at this point so it's really really shitty if you are one of the unlucky few but what can we even do?

> We can clean this crap out of the air. Nobody has to breathe in SARS-CoV-2.

?? What do you even mean. Maybe if the vaccine prevented spreading the virus we could but until we develop that I don't see how that is possible.

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

#458

Post by [deleted] »

krater23 wrote: post #391
AnthonBerg wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many scientists who are attempting to warn us that isn’t nothing. The literature is piling up. Paper: Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-021-01113-x Paper: “Excess risk for acute myocardial infarction mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic” — https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.28187 Paper: “p53/NF-kB Balance…

I would not wonder if you throw so much research time to a normal flu you will find similar things.

[deleted]

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

#459

Post by insane_dreamer »

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'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.

My daughter works at Epic, and she explained that one (though not the only one) of the big reasons health care is so expensive is because Drs have so many record-keeping requirements, and one reason they have these is because of liability. It would greatly help if Americans weren't so lawsuit trigger-happy. The real winners are the lawyers (and insurance companies).

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

#460

Post by coxmichael »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #432
coxmichael wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can be true, and greater systems of medical research and analysis don’t necessarily lead to greater on-the-ground treatment. As you’ve pointed out, access to those information systems is critical. I’d add the distribution of that information as well as the right economic incentives to participate in using that information. I’m not sure we’ve really got any one of those things right. Edit: adding a bit of humanit…

> Both can be true Not really. You can't say "doctors have become less productive" without accounting for the value incumbent in the increased documentation effort. > greater systems of medical research and analysis don’t necessarily lead to greater on-the-ground treatment. Maybe not "necessarily", but in practice they do. Perhaps not in every incidence, but broadly the analysis results in better outcomes or else the…

> broadly the analysis results in better outcomes or else there would be no economic incentive to facilitate medical research

This is true to a degree, but outcomes for real healthcare rely on much more than research, as you’ve indicated.

Documentation is part of that research, of course, and whether they have short-term or long-term effects for researchers’ ability to work out better treatment is relatively lossy.

Actual treatment also includes the rest of healthcare (training, hell, even their housing costs), and rules-based or centralised administrative systems backed by insurance don’t necessarily create the right environment for that information to be propagated more widely.

People training to be health workers don’t use the frequency or quality of medical research papers to decide whether to become a doctor.

I think there’s a view you can take on the information topology here that’s a little odd in how it’s currently set up — documentation for front-line workers and information wealth for researchers feels like it’s relatively polarised.

Post reply on HN