During a typical 15- to 20-minute clinic visit with patients, oncologist Dr. Rom Leidner opens around 20 different files on his computer. They are pieces of a puzzle, creating a picture of the patient’s cancer – blood-test results, weight trends, radiology images, microbiology, pathology, cardiology, electronic messages from other doctors, electronic messages from patients, text pages from nurses and clinic staff, prescriptions, chemotherapy orders, insurance forms.
For some files, he has to log in to specialized software for access. And after reviewing all that, he can actually examine the patient and discuss their cancer care. To keep to his schedule for seeing patients, Dr. Leidner and many doctors resort to spending their weekends copying and pasting all this information into medical charts ahead of time.