When the Doctor Must Choose Between Her Patients and Her Notes
I see people here explain all this documentation requirements as a function of it paying private health care.<p>While some of that is true, it is far from the whole explanation.<p>I am a Norwegian we have what you guys call socialised health care. I&#x27;ve been treated in the US and Norway so I can compare. In the US there is a lot more paperwork related to disclaimers, suing, billing, insurance companies etc which we don&#x27;t have to deal with.<p>However when it it comes to the medical side of things, doctors here also sit and type at their computer while seeing their patient. They are also stressed out trying to make it all add up. Just because there isn&#x27;t a profit motive doesn&#x27;t mean there isn&#x27;t a push to be more efficient from above.<p>There is lots of political pressure from above to save money on health care. The core problem here isn&#x27;t profit or not. I think the problem in common both in the US and Norway is the measurement and feedback based management. New Public Management or whatever you call it. Both in public sector and private those at the top want to be able to control and improve what is going on below and so they insist on massive amounts of feedback, so they can measure everything about how things are run. Of course they never consider the massiv cost of all this documentation.<p>It is the same in schools here in Norway. Teachers have ended up spending a shitload of time documenting and measuring over the last decades. The paperwork load keeps adding up even though every successive government says they are all about cutting paperwork.<p>IMO opinion the solution to this isn&#x27;t to go public or private but to change our ideas about how things are managed and run.