The Washington Post has an article on how Cedars-Sinai reverted to pen and paper after an electronic medical record deployment misfire and is now a ‘cautionary tale’. This is worth reading with all of the attention and money these systems are getting. Note the $35 million dollar price tag with nothing to show for it: ‘…For every doctor, nurse and executive here, there is a different explanation of what went wrong. The technology, created in-house, was clunky and slow. Only a fraction of the 2,000 doctors with privileges at the hospital were involved in developing the system, even though they faced a dramatic change in the way they practiced medicine, from jotting notes on a clipboard to logging onto a computer to type in their treatment and medication orders. Training was insufficient, and administrators opted for what Hackmeyer called a “big bang” implementation rather than switching one ward at a time…’