Generation Who Doesn’t Know Paper Chart World – EHR Natives

I loved this insight from a doctor at EMA Nation, Modernizing Medicine’s EHR user conference. When making the comment, he was talking about how many MAs in his office don’t know how to keep the clinic going in a non-EHR world (ie. the EHR is down). Obviously, that’s an example of where dependence on EHR goes too far. However, I’ve found that a great leader in a practice can easily quell and comfort these MAs (and other clinical staff) when the EHR is down or otherwise unavailable. It’s never a fun experience, but it can be managed.

While dependence on EHR has its challenges, it also illustrates where the industry is headed. Very quickly not just the MAs, but the RNs, doctors and all of your staff will be EHR natives. What’s an EHR native? It’s someone who has only practiced medicine or worked in a clinic where an EHR was present.

The number of EHR natives is still rather small, but it’s starting to grow very quickly. Soon, we won’t even be having a discussion of going back to paper charts, because a large majority of users won’t even know what it was like to practice on a paper chart. In fact, they’ll likely not even understand how someone could practice medicine on a paper chart.

This is a dramatic cultural shift that is happening right before our eyes. However, the shift is slow and gradual, so many people don’t even realize that it’s happening. While it currently is important to talk about EHR acceptance, this will be gone forever with EHR natives. Many of the paper chart culture will just disappear from healthcare.

I personally look forward to this day. That’s not to say that many of the paper chart natives can’t learn EHR as well. They can and do. Although, I know the cost of learning something new and it’s high. Trust me. I just added snapchat to my cell phone. All I longed for was to go back to SMS, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s definitely hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It’s possible, but possible doesn’t mean it’s easy.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

Categories