“I’m here to say ‘Yes, they can,’ which is different from ‘Yes, they always do,’” says James Moore, MD, President-Elect of the California Society of Anesthesiologists (CSA).
To the contrary, enthusiasm for electronic medical records (EHRs) is part of a “syndrome of inappropriate overconfidence in computing,” argues Christine Doyle, MD, the CSA’s Speaker of the House.
The two physician anesthesiologists (and self-identified “computer geeks”) squared off in a point-counterpoint debate in New Orleans as part of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) annual meeting, with Dr. Moore defending the benefits of EHRs and Dr. Doyle arguing against them. Dr. Doyle chairs the ASA’s Committee on Electronic Media and Information Technology, while Dr. Moore leads the implementation of the anesthesia information management system (AIMS) at UCLA.
Legibility, accuracy, quality
Dr. Moore defined safety in anesthesia care as “minimizing patient injury resulting from or occurring during anesthesia, and keeping surgeons from harming patients any more than they have to.” He said that computerization contributes to safe anesthesia care by improving legibility, offering clinical decision support with readily available reference information, and providing alerts and reminders.
Computer tracking of the anesthetized patient’s vital signs is more accurate, Dr. Moore said. It prevents the “normalization” of blood pressure that tends to appear on the paper record. Quality reports are easier to generate and outcomes are easier to measure with EHRs in place, he noted. “Postop troponin levels and acute kidney injury are easy to track.”