Dr. Robert Wachter is a long-time patient safety advocate who has written extensively about the trends affecting quality and safety in health care. Wachter, associate chair of the University of California-San Francisco department of medicine, years ago coined the term “hospitalist” and predicted the rise of that profession.
In his new book, “The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age,” he turns his attention to technology in health care, and the risks and rewards as we digitize everything from medical records to office visits. We talked recently about his new book. This is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.
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Q. What about initiatives like OpenNotes that allow patients to read their doctors’ electronic notes about their care? How do they change the patient-doctor relationship?
A. OpenNotes illustrates the democratization of the health care system, which is going to challenge all of the system’s fundamental underpinnings. Digitization is an enabler. It’s changing the relationship between doctors and their patients from an extraordinarily paternalistic one to one that is more democratic. In the new world, a patient’s choice is no longer just, “Do I see doctor A or B?” but “Do I even need to see a doctor at all?” OpenNotes is part of this trend.
As wonderful as patient sharing access to their information is, along with new tools to self-manage and things like telemedicine that allow patients to receive care outside the traditional system, in a world of high copays you are going to see some patients making some very bad choices. In the old days, the sick patient had to go see a doctor. Now they can go to MinuteClinic. Or they can Google their symptoms. I wouldn’t want to turn back the clock, but it raises the question, “When is self-management a bad choice?”
Read Michelle Andrews’s full article on the KHN website.
