Appropriate to ask this question BEFORE I buy a flight to interview?

[majahops]

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I'm hoping that one of the kind residents or attendings that frequent this forum could respond to this question, but I would of course welcome and appreciate opinions from my fellow medical students if they have them.

During the clinical years of medical school, I've been developing a list of things that are important to me in a hospital and residency program. There has been only ONE thing that I have identified as an absolute, 100% deal-breaker for me: if a hospital's outpatient EMR, inpatient EMR and ER EMR aren't integrated (i.e. don't "talk to each other" in a reasonably coherent manner). In other words, it is essential to me that I don't end up at a hospital where I could be told that a patient in the ER is being admitted to my service on the floor and I can't check the vitals/history/etc that has been collected in the ER using a computer on the hospital floor (without some crazy 3-step remote login procedure). I realize this might not be the "deal breaker" that many others hold, but it certainly is mine.

So my question is, can I ask a program whether their main hospital's inpatient, outpatient and ER EMR systems are fully integrated BEFORE I decide to spend time and money traveling all the way there just to find out that they aren't? And if I can ask that, who should I ask? The program director? The program coordinator? Should I search for an IT contact person at the hospital?

... I do realize that in the near future EMRs in hospitals are going to become more integrated, but I'm talking THIS coming year (my intern year), not down the road.

Thank you SO much in advance for your consideration. I would really appreciate any feedback.

 

[LumberJack]

I'm hoping that one of the kind residents or attendings that frequent this forum could respond to this question, but I would of course welcome and appreciate opinions from my fellow medical students if they have them.

During the clinical years of medical school, I've been developing a list of things that are important to me in a hospital and residency program. There has been only ONE thing that I have identified as an absolute, 100% deal-breaker for me: if a hospital's outpatient EMR, inpatient EMR and ER EMR aren't integrated (i.e. don't "talk to each other" in a reasonably coherent manner). In other words, it is essential to me that I don't end up at a hospital where I could be told that a patient in the ER is being admitted to my service on the floor and I can't check the vitals/history/etc that has been collected in the ER using a computer on the hospital floor (without some crazy 3-step remote login procedure). I realize this might not be the "deal breaker" that many others hold, but it certainly is mine.

So my question is, can I ask a program whether their main hospital's inpatient, outpatient and ER EMR systems are fully integrated BEFORE I decide to spend time and money traveling all the way there just to find out that they aren't? And if I can ask that, who should I ask? The program director? The program coordinator? Should I search for an IT contact person at the hospital?

... I do realize that in the near future EMRs in hospitals are going to become more integrated, but I'm talking THIS coming year (my intern year), not down the road.

Thank you SO much in advance for your consideration. I would really appreciate any feedback.

Obviously if you personally know any residents/interns/students at the program in question that's one quick way to find the information. If not, why don't you just post the name of the program on this thread? Odds are decent that someone may be able to help.

 

[majahops]

Obviously if you personally know any residents/interns/students at the program in question that's one quick way to find the information. If not, why don't you just post the name of the program on this thread? Odds are decent that someone may be able to help.

Well see, that's the thing... There are many different programs that I tentatively hope to interview at but don't know the answer to this question for. It'd be a matter of posting a bunch of programs names. Do you think that'd be appropriate? Would that information be useful to other people? If so, I definitely would be more than willing to.

 

[LumberJack]

The yield may not be super great, but I don't see the harm.

 

[LimbicResponse]

I saw you got an interview at Temple. I can tell you they do not have an integrated EMR. There, 1 flight saved.

 

[majahops]

re: I saw you got an interview at Temple. I can tell you they do not have an integrated EMR. There, 1 flight saved.

Hey. Thanks so much for this.

 

[RainerMaria]

This is sort of an interesting requirement for programs. I will say that a good chunk of decently ranked programs do not have fully interoperable EHR's. So with this filter you may be limiting yourself to certain community programs over say a place like Brown.

While I much prefer EHR to paper, or to a bad EHR, I'm not willing to cut out great programs for it. Now if the place is horribly malignant...