Bring Back the Luddite MovementI've made some mention of our paperless chart system, or EMR project, here and there in recent months. I do see its advantages - really, I do - but it certainly isn't perfect. When the system goes down chaos ensues, and for months it would crash nearly every week. The recurrent crashes were finally fixed with an intensive overhaul of the software, but this morning looked like being another such episode; fortunately it didn't last long.
When I logged on early this morning I found the system incredibly slow, not only with the EMR but with loading my Microsoft Outlook as well. Twenty minutes or so later, it froze and I called the help desk. By the time I got through to somebody at the desk I had tried my one basic maneuver of logging off and back on, and the problem had stopped. Later on I found out that I wasn't the only user dealing with this issue; it was the laser wireless transmitter up on the roof that had caused the problem. This "unhackable" laser sounds great on paper, but in practice it's a royal pain. What threw it off this morning? -- it was the fog.
Yes.
Fog. Gee, I can't wait till it rains... let's see what happens to our records system then! Other outages have been blamed on pigeons (apparently they knocked the laser out of kilter or something). I emailed a snarky comment to V. about this episode: "It doesn't matter if it's unhackable if it's unusable."
We have been promised a switch to good old-fashioned optic cable instead of the unreliable Buck Rogers laser system, but it hasn't happened yet. I hope they hurry up before the rainy season gets here.
Labels: The Doctor's Life
posted by Dr. Alice at #
