Making the Most of the iPad Mini on Medicine Rounds

20 12 2012

On my birthday several weeks ago, I was lucky to get an iPad Mini from my husband. I already have an iPad and have shared my experience. In fact, we gave all of our residents iPads (one of them contacted Steve Jobs and got a response), and documented an improvement in efficiency on the wards. So why the Mini? What is all the fuss? Well, after finishing 2 weeks on service, I can finally tell you why the Mini is the new must-have for doctors and future doctors.

  1. It fits in your white coat! Yes, while there were entrepeneurs who started creating the iCoat, the truth is who wants to wear a coat with a huge pocket on the side? This means that you also don’t need to wear the “strap’ that we require our residents to wear for the iPad since we did not yet invest in the iCoat.
  2. You can hold it in one hand! This for me is the best part and very underappreciated point in the blogs and reviews I have read. This means you can tough the screen with one hand while you are palming it with the other. I don’t even have the largest hands so I would say it definitely was just at the reach of my palm grasp but I can imagine it would be perfect for my male colleagues.
  3. It fits in your purse! While the female docs may find palming the iPad mini not as easy as the men, never fear…since this one is for the ladies. Many female doctors are always on a quest to find the right handbag/workbag combination. Owning an iPad always meant buying boxy “folio” type purses or shoving it to barely fit in a handbag. The mini is the PERFECT size for a medium size handbag – hobo or satchel. This means that you can go from day to night without carrying your “work bag” to the restaurant. And for the men out there, you can always get a “murse” this holiday season. I hear that they are making a big splash.
  4. You’ll carry it more. Number 1 through 3 really boil down to the fact that it is hard to carry the iPad. Because it is so easy to carry, you won’t find yourself without access to the electronic health record or paging directory. You may be more apt to show patients their images or X-rays or look something up because it is not as hard to use.
  5. You’ll make friends. Basically the minute I brought out the Mini, everyone…nurses, social workers, residents, students, and yes patients were interested in seeing it – “Mini envy” as my students called it. It’s a conversation starter that can improve collegiality and teamwork. When I visited floors that I did not usually work on (overflow patients), I met a nurse who asked me about the Mini – and the next day, she came to our rescue when we were trying to decipher the timing of a patient’s medication and a potential new allergy.
  6. It is more discrete to use at a conference (once everyone stops staring). The Mini is smaller so a bit more stealth in terms of answering a text page or checking a lab while you are sitting in case conference, and you can easily stash it back in your purse as noted above.

Some things to think about. The Mini is not without its pitfalls – many of which are predictable due to its size and interface.

  1. For the visually challenged, it can be hard to see. Sure… you can always “magnify” things with the correct gestures. But, if you are in your Citrix Client looking at your electronic health record, it may not be so easy to magnify and you may have to hold it up closer to your face which can be awkward. Maybe I just need to get my vision tested? Either way, something to be aware of.
  2. Easy to lose. As part of the residency program project, the nice thing about the iPad with strap is you an see it on the resident and its harder to walk off with. The Mini could disappear in a snap. Could someone even “pick-pocket” a doctor coat? Very possible.
  3. It is not a complete substitute for a workstation or pen and paper. This is not unique to the Mini. There is a reason that mobile tablet computing is not a complete substitute for a workstation – the lack of a keyboard. As a result, some our residents carry “paper notes” with their iPad – the paper notes are to take notes of the to-do list that is created on rounds -nothing like checking all those boxes off as an intern. The iPad does not replace that so readily – and while there others thinking about this space, its worth noting that the preference for pen and paper to organize one’s thoughts is very strong. I have to admit, watching the catchy commercial for the Windows Surface, there is still something so appealing about an external keyboard.

So what is the verdict for the Mini? Well, as we say in medicine, the risks of the Mini are outweighed by its benefits making it the perfect prescription for all the physicians or physicians to be in your life. And there’s still a few shopping days left before Christmas…

Happy Holidays!

Vineet Arora MD


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Categories : doctor, hospital life

Time to Fight Horrors of Healthcare Costs by Taking Charge of Teaching Value

31 10 2012

This Halloween, several creative costumes have emerged from the zingers of the Presidential debates – Big Bird costumes are selling out like hotcakes. For a more do it yourself look, here’s a recipe for Binders full of women.  The debate over the best way to contain healthcare costs have also been a central part of the debates, and yet medical bills do not seem to make popular costumes. Maybe that is because that unaffordability of healthcare is too horrifying for ironic humor – even on Halloween.

As we head into the election, patients are increasingly being terrorized by runaway healthcare costs.  Americans outspend our peers two to one and still seem to be worse off. We overtest and overtreat to the point of absurdity.   According to a recent report, “The U.S. did 100 MRI tests and 265 CT tests for every 1000 people in 2010 — more than twice the average in other OECD countries.”  The causes are multifactorial but the solutions can’t be left to presidents and policymakers alone. An important part of the responsibility rests with healthcare professionals and the educators who train them.

Experts in health professions education and economics have lamented the poor state of education on healthcare costs.  Over 60% of U.S. medical graduates describe their medical economics training as “inadequate.”  Not only are medical trainees unaware of the costs of the tests that they order, they are rarely positioned to understand the downstream financial harms medical bills can have on patients.  More recently, Medicare, the largest funder of residency training in the United States, is concerned that we are not producing the physicians to practice cost-conscious medicine in an era of diminished resources.

We have been scared in the dark too long and this Halloween the time has come to Take Charge.

Join us now at http://teachingvalue.org/takecharge

About Teaching Value: the Costs of Care Teaching Value Project is an initiative of Costs of Care that is funded by the ABIM Foundation.  Our team is comprised of medical educators and trainees who believe it is time to transform the American healthcare system by empowering cost-conscious caregivers to deflate medical bills and protect patients’ wallets.  Our web-based video modules are designed to be easy to access for anyone anywhere and provide a starting point for tackling this problem. It’s time to emerge from the darkness and do our part to tame the terror of healthcare costs.


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Categories : medical student, residency training

What Happens in Vegas Can Be Used to Teach Costs of Care

16 02 2012

Funded with a grant from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation,  Costs of Care has partnered with medical educators at Harvard Medical School and the University of Chicago (that would be us!) to start addressing this problem. We are developing a series of web-based medical education videos that use clinical vignettes to illustrate core principles of cost-consideration, including how to communicate with patients about avoiding unnecessary care and reducing overused or misused tests and procedures.  As part of the project launch, we released a new teaser video today called “What if Your Hotel Bill Was Like a Hospital Bill?”. The video is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the challenges patients face in deciphering medical expenses, and their additional confusion when they learn doctors are not trained to consider costs.  - Excerpt from Costs of Care Press Release by Dr. Neel Shah  

How does this relate to Vegas?

On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my family for the holidays, I was in the Bellagio lobby admiring the Chihuly glass ceiling.  While that was impressive, I was also watching the clerks check in and out the long lines of visitors to the hotel.  The staff explained any charges on the bill, confirmed that the bill agrees with the expectations of the patron and then finalized the transaction, printing a copy on the spot for the traveler before they got in the cab to the airport hailed by the bellman.   What a far cry from hospitals where most of the hospital staff have no idea how much anything costs!  After all, doctors are notoriously bad at considering costs in the doctor-patient relationship, as demonstrated by a great piece by Dr. Peter Ubel on his experience with the cost of his own prescription medications. As Paolo (or Paul who works as our research project manager in his day job) from Hotel Hospital highlights, “our hotel staff specifically focus on the highest quality of care…I doubt that they even know how much anything costs here.”  The rest of the script was easy to write.  Shooting was a lot harder since we had to find a spot in the hospital that looked like a hotel but thanks to some creative camera angles and props from our MergeLab team, we were able to get it done.

Learning about costs of care is critical to taking care of patients.  This was especially poignant during my recent inpatient service block at a nearby community hospital, since I cared for many uninsured patients who paid out of pocket for their medications (not to mention their hospital stay).   Our residents were concerned about one patient who was uninsured and would have difficulty paying for Plavix, a critically important drug after his heart procedure.  Review of his medications also revealed he was recently put on Lexapro, a nongeneric antidepressant (with a sordid history) that was costing him over 100 dollars a month when there is a generic alternative for 4 dollars a month, which would help him afford his Plavix.   When physicians do discuss costs, they also get it wrong and perpetuate a ‘medical urban legend’ like stating that patients have to pay when they leave the hospital against medical advice (this is not true!).   These are just a few of many examples of why teaching students and residents to bring up costs and arming them with tools to address the issue with their future patients is imperative.  Without considering costs of care, we all take a ‘gamble’ that costs of care are not an issue for patients….Of course, the odds are against that.

Stay tuned for more work from our Teaching Value Project from Costs of Care funded by the ABIM Foundation. 

–Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP

Special thanks to our production team and actors: Mark Saathoff , Andy Levy MS4, Kimberly Beiting, Paul Staisiunas, Jeanne Farnan, and Neel Shah!


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