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    Why Computerized Medical Records Are Bad for Both You and Your Doctor

    Doctors have become slaves to their computer screens for billing purposes, diminishing patient care, increasing doctor dissatisfaction, and increasing health care costs—and this needs to change.
    by Samuel Shem Nov 22, 2019 5 minutes
    Screen Time Overload Interns and residents on each 16-hour shift spend about 80% of their time in front of a screen, not interacting with patients.
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    For several years I have asked people "Why, in your appointment with your doctor, is his or her back turned to you, working on a computer?" The common answers: "She's writing down my words to remember them," "He's ordering tests," or "To get me better health care."

    No, no and no: the primary purpose of the computer is billing. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is essentially a cash register. It was developed by technocrats as part of a mandate of the Obama administration in 2008, to help make medical records more efficient. It was a good idea: to make all clinical data from a patient's medical history readily available electronically to doctors and other health care workers. It would have worked, if it were used only for that.

    But somehow the for-profit insurance industry got into the EMR, and linked the medical data part tightly to the money part—through billing. Its core function became coding diagnoses and

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