With the rolling out of the Health IT track on the second full day of HM16, The Hospitalist asked: What problem do you hope health IT solves or helps you solve over the next five years?

Farhanaz Chowdhury, MD

Farhanaz Chowdhury, MD, hospitalist, HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Belleville, Ill.

“I think that hospital health systems are very primitive. When they make that software, physicians should be more involved so that in everyday life, what we see when we are facing all those problems, you have an algorithm if you want to do something. It should pop up so that you don’t have to write it down and scroll all over.”

Michael Lintner, MD, hospitalist, Aspen Valley Hospital, Colo.

Michael Lintner, MD

“I think probably the main thing would be work flow, facilitating work flow. I think today hospitalists are just getting more and more and more work. Patient loads are getting increasingly bigger. I think with IT, [we need] systems that facilitate and help with the work flow and help the hospitalist’s day go smoother because there are so many things that we do.”

Miguel Lizardo, MD, hospitalist, University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, Worcester

“It takes a lot of time to interact with the EMRs and all the technology that we have to use. If they can find a way that we can use it in a more user-friendly [way] so that it takes not a long time, that would be great. At least the EMRs that I’ve been in contact with are too cumbersome, too many clicks to get where you want, a bunch of steps to document what you need to. You really are away from the patient and spending a lot of time trying to document.”

Sandeep Palikhel, PA-C, Baylor University Medical Center, Waco, Tex.

“Definitely accuracy. In Texas, where I practice, we get a lot of transfers from rural areas because we are a Level 1 trauma hospital. We get these discharge summaries or progress notes from other hospitals that are handwritten. A lot of information gets missed whenever we’re reading it because it’s not legible, first thing, and it’s not as detail-oriented as the EHRs would be. So that definitely helps. Even going through a medication list, it helps so much to go through an EHR versus going through a handwritten medication list. That’s what I mean by accuracy.”