Time to Think

Progress Note from My New Practice

In my old practice, in a traditional primary care office, I saw a regular patient every 15 minutes when we were in our old EMR. Because our new EMR (Epic) was more complicated, I saw a regular patient every 30 minutes even a year into it. New patients or physicals had double that amount of time. There was no time set aside in my day or in my week for reviewing incoming reports, researching diagnostic or treatment options for complicated patients, writing letters, answering portal messages, refilling prescriptions or any of the other things that doctors are expected to do. All that happened after clinic hours for me. Many of my colleagues, especially the younger ones, were able to find the time between patients to do that. But since I’m old-school, I have it in my bone marrow to give all the allotted visit time to the patient and try to figure out how to do the rest in imaginary or my personal time.

I couldn’t figure out how to do that. So I left.