Does doctor note-taking method affect quality of care?

Donna Cusano

Making considerable news is a Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) study published 19 May, on how physician dictation of notes, later transcribed into an EHR, resulted in lower quality than either structured documentation or free-text notes typed directly into the EHR, sampling 7,000 diabetes and coronary artery disease patients. One obvious conclusion is that information gets lost when it goes via a third party; the other (amazing) fact is that free-text notes are picked up accurately. The age of this study–2007-8–also represents a huge generation gap, not only in design and ease of use, but also in doctor familiarity. One wonders if the dictation information would be so off now. Reader thoughts? Doctors’ EHR note-taking method affects quality of care (AMEDNews.com)