Screen Time vs. Face Time?

Doctors are angry about EMRs and pushing back. They are complaining that screen time is getting in the way of face time with patients and it is contributing to the already mountain of stress and burnout and interfering with just letting doctors be doctors... "Just a glorified billing platform with the patient stuff tacked on." 

Yet, there is another group of those who are in the Sick Care gig economy looking for more work-life balance spending more, not less, time in front of their beloved computers or mobile devices. The screen time/face time smack-down will continue to build as:

1. Information and communications technologies become an integral part of the practice of medicine.

2. More doctors seek work-life balance.

3. The digital health economy continues to grow and mature.

4. New job titles are created to manage mountains of data.

5. The Internet of Things creates new diagnostic and treatment options and DIY medical opportunities.

6. Digital health management education programs evolve.

7. Physician entrepreneurs leave clinical practice to pursue non-clinical ways to help patients.

8. Medical students and residents plan to have limited clinical half-lives.

9. The Sick Care gig economy grows.

10. Resistance to physician entrepreneurship, particularly in countries with single-payer, government Sick Care systems, disappears.

Check your Apple Watch. The clock is ticking and doctors are adopting an entrepreneurial mindset to make things better for patients while there is still time to do it. Some will be doing it from an iPad while sailing in the Mediterranean as part of their 10/20/30 plan. 

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org