2014 Gift Guide: What’s the Hottest Tech to Get Your Hospitalist?

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By  |  December 12, 2014 | 

HOSPITALIST TOP TECH GIFT GUIDE 2014

It is that special gift giving time of year. What to get that favorite hospitalist of yours? Don’t fret. I’ve compiled a short list of the hottest trending #hospitalistgifts. I may walk around the hospital with a pager like a 1980s drug dealer. But you can have the latest technology in Hospital Medicine.

Instant Replay Package

In 2014, MLB added replay review for those close calls. Equip your emergency room with the same technology the major sports carry with upgrades that allow for admission call reversals.

“Hey Dr. Hospitalist, I have a chest pain in bed 5. Seems labs and ECG are ok, but 3 days of continuous chest pain, need to bring him in.”

“Do you mind if we check out the instant replay?”

“Alright, let’s go to the monitors. Hmmm. Looks like he’s been here 5 times for the same chest pain the last few months. Oh, and stress test negative last week. He does seem to just want some pain medicine. Call reversed! I’m sending him home!”

Hospitalist Drone Service

In 2014, Amazon announced a Drone Delivery System: Amazon Air. The forward thinking hospitalist groups are all getting their own drone services, sending them out to their patients’ houses. An HCAHPS drone will flash ALWAYS out their window until the survey is completed. The READMISSION DRONE will circle your patient’s house for 30 days preventing them from returning to the hospital. (Your patients can do what they want after 30 days.)

An EMR That’s Less Buggy than iOS 8 for the iPhone 6…

My favorite part of the day is the daily exercise I get at each physician workstation. Within the doc area of 5 computers, I can sit down, get up, and sit down again on 5 different chairs, in front of 5 different computers, searching for the holy grail of a working workstation. I log in to the computer, it freezes, doesn’t log on, or shows me a spinning timer that hypnotizes me into thinking that everything is fine… the EMR will save you time, save you time, save you time.

I call IT.

Yes, I typed in my password correctly. No, caps lock isn’t on. Yes, I logged off and then back on. Oh, reboot the whole system? I was told never to do that.  I won’t crash the entire system? The button in the back? I’ll try. I can reach if I stretch. Way. Over. There.

Got it.

Yes, that seemed to do the trick.

And thanks for the workout.

Yes, Happy Holidays to you, too.

(…and on the twelfth day of Christmas, my hospital gave to me, an EMR that was glitch-free.)

…..yet, the EMR is also more intuitive.

Why does it take so long to understand and the discover the intricacies and nuances of the hospital’s EMR? I need 10,000 hours to master our computer system. My ipad, my smartphone, my TV, my latest apps, and my printer came with no instructions, or at most a fold out poster with 4 pictures. The rest of the learning is all intuitive. My kids have been operating these gadgets within seconds of picking them up.

The EMR required hours of education, several seminars in between, constant calls to IT, backdoor and work-arounds.

HIPAA Compliant GoPro Cameras

Your HCAHPS scores are in the tank. Here’s the fifth complaint this week that you explained nothing to Mr. Smith, the meds weren’t reviewed, you didn’t sit down, and that you didn’t see Mr. Jones at all this morning.

Let’s go to the tape.

You have the GoPro sewn into your white coat, instantly uploading to YouTube.

See there, when I walked into the room, the chair was occupied with dirty laundry. I tried to use the windowsill as a seat, but the water from the flowers spilled on the counter. Look, that’s me drawing on the whiteboard. That’s clearly a gallbladder. Or a pineapple. No, definitely a gallbladder. I told Mr. Smith all about his cholecystitis! And there I am with Mr. Jones. He’s having a whole conversation with me. Ok, yes, he might think he’s in his house serving me dinner, but I was there. It’s on tape!

And, of course, 4 nocturnists. (Who couldn’t use some extra nocturnists? Maybe robot nocturnists? None of us have to work nights again!)

For 2015, look for the no-tech guide. Perhaps more time to sit without my iPhone ringing, pager beeping, alerts flashing, EMR crashing. Just me and my patient. That would be a gift.

What are your hottest #hospitalistgifts for 2014?

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About the Author: Jordan Messler

Jordan Messler, MD is the Executive Director, Quality Initiatives at Glytec and works as a hospitalist at Morton Plant Hospitalist group in Clearwater, Florida. He is also serves as the Physician Blog Editor of The Hospital Leader blog. He previously chaired SHM’s Quality and Patient Safety Committee. In addition, he’s been active in several SHM mentoring programs, including Project BOOST and Glycemic Control. He went to medical school at University of South Florida, in Tampa and completed his residency at Emory University. He recognizes the challenges of working in a hospital that lines the intracostal waterways of a spring break mecca and requests that if you want to be selected as a mentored site, you will have a similar location with palm trees and coastline nearby. He tries to find time to sit on the beach with his family to escape the hospital’s miasma. While there, he looks forward to reading about the history of hospitals/medicine, and how it relates to quality. But inevitably, he will have his daughter dumping sand on him and then has to explain to his wife why their daughter is buried up to her neck.

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