Is Cerner a Garbage EMR?

[Psai]

EMRs are great for data geeks like me in clinical research or quality type areas, but man I feel sorry for people who actually have to use them for documenting patient care with the way they are currently set up. Watching the nurses chart stuff is painful.

As noted above, it really does come down to the build and if the hospital system isn't willing or able to put in the time, effort, and resources to do it well you're going to end up with a mess thats not at all user friendly.

I've been in two systems with Epic, one with Cerner, and one with Meditech. I thought the first two were fine for my purposes but our meditech build was atrocious. I heard from another site they really liked their meditech and couldn't figure out why everyone else hated it so much. I explained in detail why and they had none of our issues. Turns out they had an in house IT guru with some solid clinical experience on their build team and thanks to him having quite a bit of experience with different EMRs and builds, they were able to do a really good job.

Nothing kills my soul more than reading a np or pa note that is already useless but goes "the duration is one day. The onset is sudden. It is nine out of ten in severity". I mean Jesus even if you don't know any medicine at least make the note readable so I can waste less of my time.

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[VincentAdultman]

Ours took 14 clicks to report a negative rapid strep. Other things weren't much better. Cerner took 2

Yeah sounds like your main problem is ordering rapid streps.

 

[RangerBob]

I like CPRS the most. It's unfortunate the VA is moving to cerner. Would've been better if everyone else just used the VA system-would be cheaper (ie, free). Of course, CPRS wasn't built/optimized for billing.

If I recall, EMRs haven't actually been shown to improve patient safety or physician efficiency. But they improve billing, which is what most hospitals care about.

I'm so glad now as an attending I can give verbal orders. We weren't allowed to as residents. Now I can tell a nurse "yes, let's make that Tylenol QID" instead of going to a workstation between patients or waiting until the end of rounds.

I do like epic more than Cerner. Copy forward is an amazing thing. Our version of Cerner has it but it's clunky, and copy/paste/edit is more efficient. Placing and looking up orders in epic is eons better than doing so in Cerner. I find med recs easier in epic as well. But I'm stuck with Cerner and it's quite workable now that I'm getting used to it.

 

[RNthenDoc]

I like CPRS the most. It's unfortunate the VA is moving to cerner. Would've been better if everyone else just used the VA system-would be cheaper (ie, free). Of course, CPRS wasn't built/optimized for billing.

If I recall, EMRs haven't actually been shown to improve patient safety or physician efficiency. But they improve billing, which is what most hospitals care about.

I'm so glad now as an attending I can give verbal orders. We weren't allowed to as residents. Now I can tell a nurse "yes, let's make that Tylenol QID" instead of going to a workstation between patients or waiting until the end of rounds.

I do like epic more than Cerner. Copy forward is an amazing thing. Our version of Cerner has it but it's clunky, and copy/paste/edit is more efficient. Placing and looking up orders in epic is eons better than doing so in Cerner. I find med recs easier in epic as well. But I'm stuck with Cerner and it's quite workable now that I'm getting used to it.

If they haven’t taught you the “macros” and how to do some of the deeper order set stuff make sure they do! Obviously I don’t know what build you’re working with, but the providers who invested a little time into building their Cerner stuff were really glad they did and got a lot of time savings out of it.

The interface is still clunky as all getout, though.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

Nothing kills my soul more than reading a np or pa note that is already useless but goes "the duration is one day. The onset is sudden. It is nine out of ten in severity". I mean Jesus even if you don't know any medicine at least make the note readable so I can waste less of my time.

Skip the HPI. All that matters is going to be in the assessment and plan.

 

[mvenus929]

I do like epic more than Cerner. Copy forward is an amazing thing. Our version of Cerner has it but it's clunky, and copy/paste/edit is more efficient. Placing and looking up orders in epic is eons better than doing so in Cerner. I find med recs easier in epic as well. But I'm stuck with Cerner and it's quite workable now that I'm getting used to it.

You can copy forward power notes. But powernotes look awful, so most people use DynDocs when given the choice. The tagging feature is nice, but agreed that it is clunky to copy forward notes in that context.

 

[DrMcCoyDO]

My hospital uses one called Sunrise; it’s pretty decent, as far as EMRs go.