Google assumption: Docs will spend even less time with patients
As the new interim head of Google Health, Marissa Mayer makes an interesting statement about how Google Health will engage physicians (via World Health Care Blog) (emphasis mine)
While the focus will be on improving health care and making records more accessible and portable for patients, Google will also improve life for physicians, Mayer noted.
“The goal for a lot of doctors is how many patients can they see in a day,” Mayer said. “That means their minutes per patient has got to go down, and the less time they have to spend finding and going over patient records the better. Ultimately we will design a product that’s useful for users, and also helps doctors do their job more quickly and more efficiently.”
Anyone else find it odd that the assumption is that physicians want to spend less time with their patients and would much rather interact with a record than spend some time interacting with their patient?
While this statement is sadly true in how physicians are incentivized today, one it is clear that the finance view of the world can’t continue in a world where primary care docs already see somewhere between 40 and 60 patients a day.
Does Google understand (or need to understand) the relationships and soft facts underlying the information they look to gather in the PHR?
