| | AUGUST - 20208UTLOOKHealthcare Tech IN MY OPINIONWhen patients come to me with "I'd like an antibiotic for my cough" my first instinct is to say "Let's talk about your cough and figure out the best course of treatment." The same is true when a user of the EHR comes to me with a request for a specific feature in the EHR ­ "Let's talk about your issue and figure out the best course of action." Quite often it is not either the requested antibiotic or the requested EHR feature that is actually needed.I am part of a large group of physicians and other clinicians, including nurses who have an interest in making the EHR work better for delivering care to patients. We are called informaticists, informaticians, and sometimes even "the EHR lady". One of the many roles we play is to help diagnose your problem and solve it ­ when it comes to how you interact with the EHR. Most often the diagnoses involve both operations issues and information technology issues (also training, experience, folk lore, regulatory, security, privacy, safety, and every other type of issue), and we are trained to recognize and help resolve them. We are also physicians with intimate knowledge of the work of caring for a patient, giving us a unique perspective on how an EHR should be designed to support that endeavor. We know that every click is a burden, because we make the clicks, too; we know that there are regulatory requirements that healthcare By Rebecca G. Mishuris, MD, MPH, MS, Chief Medical Information Officer, Boston Medical Center & Assistant Professor, Boston University School of MedicineTHE[EHR]DOCTOR IS IN
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