Overload of Medical Documentation: A Disincentive for Healthcare Professionals
This review addresses the theories concerning the development and functioning of medical bureaucracy creating an excess of the patient records. An ever-growing number of medical files comply with the typical development of the bureaucratic management of a
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Overload of Medical Documentation: A Disincentive for Healthcare Professionals Jacek Lorkowski, Izabella Maciejowska-Wilcock, and Mieczyslaw Pokorski Abstract
This review addresses the theories concerning the development and functioning of medical bureaucracy creating an excess of the patient records. An ever-growing number of medical files comply with the typical development of the bureaucratic management of an entrepreneurial organization, an essential feature of which is the life cycle of documentation. When the life cycle ends, an update is created with a multiplication of forms and items to be filled out, resembling that of what happens with the outdated computer program. Yet medical records should have a logical and wellfunctioning structure using the language of computer science in the form of a cascade or evolutionary model. Further, we believe that mass computerization, in contradistinction to the primary predestination purpose, increases the number of time-consuming medical records, with the evidence that it enhances the occupational burnout among physicians. J. Lorkowski (*) Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, Central Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Interior, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] I. Maciejowska-Wilcock Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland M. Pokorski Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Opole, Opole, Poland
Clear and concise medical documentation is necessary to handle economic and legal issues in medicine. However, the creation of medical records sits at the crux between a healthconscious provision of the best evidencedriven treatment and the continuum of care and a potential health detriment caused by taking away the time and care devoted to the patient by healthcare professionals. We submit that the hitherto pattern of creating medical records requires a turnabout to attain the intended reasons and user-friendliness for practical ends. Keywords
Administrative issues · Bureaucracy · Burnout syndrome · Documentation life cycle · Mass computerization · Medical records
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Background
Almost everything has been said and written about overgrowth and the ever-growing administration in the modern world. Bureaucracy (French bureau, office, and Greek kratos, power) is a term used since the eighteenth century to describe the sociopolitical and economic reality then prevailing in Europe. The emergence of this concept, in the mid-eighteenth century before the Great French Revolution, was one of the signals
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of impending attempts to change the sociopolitical system, characterized, inter alia, by excessive but inefficient administration (Rothbard 2010). To contend with ubiquitous bureaucracy, Vincent de Gournay (2020) has made a famous line, particularly in the economic field, saying “Let it go, let it pass”. This expressive and simple call has become the basis of liberalism. Unfortunately, the State, with its highly bureaucratic formal structures, was an obstacle to the economic freedom at the time.
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Multifaceted Views on Bureaucracy
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