Medical History Becomes History

by Zoë Pollock

Danielle Ofri sounds the alarm about some possible constraints of electronic medical records:

It turns out that in our electronic medical record system there is a 1,000-character maximum in the “assessment” field. While I’ve been typing, the character number has been counting backward from 1,000, and now I’ve hit zero. The computer will not permit me to say anything more about my patient. ...

I nip and tuck my descriptions of his diabetes, his hypertension, his aortic valve stenosis, trying to placate the demands of our nit-picky computer system. Nevertheless, I am still unable to fit a complete assessment into the box.

In desperation, I call the help desk and voice my concerns. “Well, we can’t have the doctors rambling on forever,” the tech replies.