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Sorry, but I can’t help you. What I can do is tell you you’re not alone. Datamania is now an endemic malady. Everybody has it and everybody’s doing it, even some you’d never imagine. If misery loves company, you should soon be head over heels.
1. Tiers for Tots
“What are the parents like?” I ask.
“They’re great!” Tracy says. “They want their kids to be creative and play.”
She frowns. “But my boss insists I give him data.”
“Data? What data?”
“Studies show that letter recognition in kindergarten correlates with reading ability in third grade,” she says. “So I have to test the kids and provide him with the data.”
“And what if the kids flub letter recognition?”
Tracy’s smile is now rueful. “Then they might need a Tier 2 intervention.”
“Good grief! What is a Tier 2 intervention?”
“It’s time consuming,” she says. “It takes a lot of one-on-one work, me and the kid.”
Less play all around, I guess. But documentation must be done, and data delivered. By the kindergarten teacher!
2. Filing for firefighters
Bruce has been a firefighter for 30 years, and it’s starting to wear him down. The physical exertion? The stress? Nah.
“The paperwork is driving me crazy,” he says.
“What paperwork?”
“In between calls, we spend hours filling out forms,” he says.
“Which forms?”
“At the scene, you go to work on the fire and help people get to safety. Then you see how they’re doing, and refer the ones who need it for medical help.
“Used to be,” says Bruce, “that you’d eyeball someone, ask them how they felt and if they needed to go to the hospital. If they said they were OK, they were good to leave.”
“And now?”
“Now we have to cover ourselves. We need to document how they look, what they say, what we asked them, what they answered. They have to sign a release that we asked them what we needed to ask and they answered what we needed to hear, that they said they were OK and didn’t need to go to the ER and signed off on it. Takes a lot of time.”
And paper. Maybe little kids who used to dream of being firefighters will start to dream that they’ll be file clerks with big red hats.
3. Your personal banker doesn’t know you!
Marina looks frazzled. “Stress at work,” she says. “It gets worse all the time.”
I know Marina works at a community bank. “What’s the problem?” I ask. “More restrictions on lending?”
“Oh sure,” she says, “but that’s an old story. Now there are new regulations to prevent money laundering. We have to know the identity of anybody who makes a deposit.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“In principle sure,” she says. “But in practice what happens is this: Somebody wants to make any change – to add a relative, upgrade to a newer checking account. Even if they’ve been our depositors for 20 years, we have to ask them to produce all kinds of personal information for us to show regulators if they ask if we know people we’ve known forever.”
“Do the regulators ever ask?”
“Of course not,” says Marina. “But we have to fill out the forms, which take all day.”
It’s everywhere, folks. Bureaucratization is pervasive. No one can escape. Where is Franz Kafka now that we need him?
We in medicine know this all too well, of course. Perhaps the leading cause of physician retirement is introducing EHR into the institutions they work at.
There are, of course, always reasons and justifications for bureaucratic rules. You know them all, and it doesn’t matter. Fish gotta swim and clerks gotta file. Besides, it is now an article of faith that from large data sets shall go forth great wisdom. In precision medicine. Also, in kindergarten.
Sorry, but I have to go. I’m doing my charts, and there are templates to paste and boilers to plate.
As the apocryphal cardiologist may have said, “Hey, things could be worse. I could be younger.”
Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass., and is a longtime contributor to Dermatology News. He serves on the clinical faculty at Tufts University, Boston, and has taught senior medical students and other trainees for 30 years. His second book, “Act Like a Doctor, Think Like a Patient,” is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Write to him at dermnews@mdedge.com.
Sorry, but I can’t help you. What I can do is tell you you’re not alone. Datamania is now an endemic malady. Everybody has it and everybody’s doing it, even some you’d never imagine. If misery loves company, you should soon be head over heels.
1. Tiers for Tots
“What are the parents like?” I ask.
“They’re great!” Tracy says. “They want their kids to be creative and play.”
She frowns. “But my boss insists I give him data.”
“Data? What data?”
“Studies show that letter recognition in kindergarten correlates with reading ability in third grade,” she says. “So I have to test the kids and provide him with the data.”
“And what if the kids flub letter recognition?”
Tracy’s smile is now rueful. “Then they might need a Tier 2 intervention.”
“Good grief! What is a Tier 2 intervention?”
“It’s time consuming,” she says. “It takes a lot of one-on-one work, me and the kid.”
Less play all around, I guess. But documentation must be done, and data delivered. By the kindergarten teacher!
2. Filing for firefighters
Bruce has been a firefighter for 30 years, and it’s starting to wear him down. The physical exertion? The stress? Nah.
“The paperwork is driving me crazy,” he says.
“What paperwork?”
“In between calls, we spend hours filling out forms,” he says.
“Which forms?”
“At the scene, you go to work on the fire and help people get to safety. Then you see how they’re doing, and refer the ones who need it for medical help.
“Used to be,” says Bruce, “that you’d eyeball someone, ask them how they felt and if they needed to go to the hospital. If they said they were OK, they were good to leave.”
“And now?”
“Now we have to cover ourselves. We need to document how they look, what they say, what we asked them, what they answered. They have to sign a release that we asked them what we needed to ask and they answered what we needed to hear, that they said they were OK and didn’t need to go to the ER and signed off on it. Takes a lot of time.”
And paper. Maybe little kids who used to dream of being firefighters will start to dream that they’ll be file clerks with big red hats.
3. Your personal banker doesn’t know you!
Marina looks frazzled. “Stress at work,” she says. “It gets worse all the time.”
I know Marina works at a community bank. “What’s the problem?” I ask. “More restrictions on lending?”
“Oh sure,” she says, “but that’s an old story. Now there are new regulations to prevent money laundering. We have to know the identity of anybody who makes a deposit.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“In principle sure,” she says. “But in practice what happens is this: Somebody wants to make any change – to add a relative, upgrade to a newer checking account. Even if they’ve been our depositors for 20 years, we have to ask them to produce all kinds of personal information for us to show regulators if they ask if we know people we’ve known forever.”
“Do the regulators ever ask?”
“Of course not,” says Marina. “But we have to fill out the forms, which take all day.”
It’s everywhere, folks. Bureaucratization is pervasive. No one can escape. Where is Franz Kafka now that we need him?
We in medicine know this all too well, of course. Perhaps the leading cause of physician retirement is introducing EHR into the institutions they work at.
There are, of course, always reasons and justifications for bureaucratic rules. You know them all, and it doesn’t matter. Fish gotta swim and clerks gotta file. Besides, it is now an article of faith that from large data sets shall go forth great wisdom. In precision medicine. Also, in kindergarten.
Sorry, but I have to go. I’m doing my charts, and there are templates to paste and boilers to plate.
As the apocryphal cardiologist may have said, “Hey, things could be worse. I could be younger.”
Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass., and is a longtime contributor to Dermatology News. He serves on the clinical faculty at Tufts University, Boston, and has taught senior medical students and other trainees for 30 years. His second book, “Act Like a Doctor, Think Like a Patient,” is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Write to him at dermnews@mdedge.com.
Sorry, but I can’t help you. What I can do is tell you you’re not alone. Datamania is now an endemic malady. Everybody has it and everybody’s doing it, even some you’d never imagine. If misery loves company, you should soon be head over heels.
1. Tiers for Tots
“What are the parents like?” I ask.
“They’re great!” Tracy says. “They want their kids to be creative and play.”
She frowns. “But my boss insists I give him data.”
“Data? What data?”
“Studies show that letter recognition in kindergarten correlates with reading ability in third grade,” she says. “So I have to test the kids and provide him with the data.”
“And what if the kids flub letter recognition?”
Tracy’s smile is now rueful. “Then they might need a Tier 2 intervention.”
“Good grief! What is a Tier 2 intervention?”
“It’s time consuming,” she says. “It takes a lot of one-on-one work, me and the kid.”
Less play all around, I guess. But documentation must be done, and data delivered. By the kindergarten teacher!
2. Filing for firefighters
Bruce has been a firefighter for 30 years, and it’s starting to wear him down. The physical exertion? The stress? Nah.
“The paperwork is driving me crazy,” he says.
“What paperwork?”
“In between calls, we spend hours filling out forms,” he says.
“Which forms?”
“At the scene, you go to work on the fire and help people get to safety. Then you see how they’re doing, and refer the ones who need it for medical help.
“Used to be,” says Bruce, “that you’d eyeball someone, ask them how they felt and if they needed to go to the hospital. If they said they were OK, they were good to leave.”
“And now?”
“Now we have to cover ourselves. We need to document how they look, what they say, what we asked them, what they answered. They have to sign a release that we asked them what we needed to ask and they answered what we needed to hear, that they said they were OK and didn’t need to go to the ER and signed off on it. Takes a lot of time.”
And paper. Maybe little kids who used to dream of being firefighters will start to dream that they’ll be file clerks with big red hats.
3. Your personal banker doesn’t know you!
Marina looks frazzled. “Stress at work,” she says. “It gets worse all the time.”
I know Marina works at a community bank. “What’s the problem?” I ask. “More restrictions on lending?”
“Oh sure,” she says, “but that’s an old story. Now there are new regulations to prevent money laundering. We have to know the identity of anybody who makes a deposit.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“In principle sure,” she says. “But in practice what happens is this: Somebody wants to make any change – to add a relative, upgrade to a newer checking account. Even if they’ve been our depositors for 20 years, we have to ask them to produce all kinds of personal information for us to show regulators if they ask if we know people we’ve known forever.”
“Do the regulators ever ask?”
“Of course not,” says Marina. “But we have to fill out the forms, which take all day.”
It’s everywhere, folks. Bureaucratization is pervasive. No one can escape. Where is Franz Kafka now that we need him?
We in medicine know this all too well, of course. Perhaps the leading cause of physician retirement is introducing EHR into the institutions they work at.
There are, of course, always reasons and justifications for bureaucratic rules. You know them all, and it doesn’t matter. Fish gotta swim and clerks gotta file. Besides, it is now an article of faith that from large data sets shall go forth great wisdom. In precision medicine. Also, in kindergarten.
Sorry, but I have to go. I’m doing my charts, and there are templates to paste and boilers to plate.
As the apocryphal cardiologist may have said, “Hey, things could be worse. I could be younger.”
Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass., and is a longtime contributor to Dermatology News. He serves on the clinical faculty at Tufts University, Boston, and has taught senior medical students and other trainees for 30 years. His second book, “Act Like a Doctor, Think Like a Patient,” is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Write to him at dermnews@mdedge.com.