Had to put this up while the disbelief is still fresh in my mind.  First, I can't believe that its taken me this long to realize this and that more Epic users are not upset by it!

I am going to forego much of the lead-in and assume some familiarity with the Epic electronic health record system.  Apologies to the non-Epic world out there...which seems to be growing smaller.

When seeking a patient record using the Patient Lookup feature, a user can input a partial name like in many systems and then, depending on how common that string is among all patient names, the search engine returns a list of possibilities.  Here is where it gets unbelievable: when clicking on the heading Age to sort the list by patient age (eg. 8 days, 12 years, 76 years), the system only sorts by the numbers, like an 10-year old's first Excel spreadsheet.  Thus, the result is that 76 year old will be sorted as younger than a 9-month-old or even an 8 day old.

In what medical practice is that OK?!  I was floored that this was the level of thought that has gone into the EHR that now dominates the market.  It's not that I couldn't eventually find the patient or even that it wasted a lot of my time.  I am concerned that this speaks to the mentality and focus of the company.  Is this an oversight?  In that case, the problem is the ambition or hubris that led Epic to think that their system to could be all things to all people from billers to nurses.  Or is it for lack of caring about details?  That would be even more concerning as this assumes that users will be more drawn by the bells and whistles than the true functionality of the system.  This is fine for most technology applications.  There will always be users who would choose form over function - style over substance.  However, much of the time in the practice of medicine - the care of the patient - the care of another human being - the details are kinda important.

Epic trainers always stress how there are multiple ways to get to all activities in the system.  However, when they all lead to a suboptimal activity - either one that endangers the patient (rare) or one that takes  up more of the practitioner's time and attention (common) - these multiple pathways only serve to make the workspace busier or the icons and buttons smaller.  It's a bit like Where's Waldo as I search for the correct button or menu.  To help me, the Epic builders have created a lot of 'Waldos' in the user interface.  The endpoint is still the same...after you have entered your Epic activity, just like when you find Waldo, you find yourself asking, "OK, now what do I do with this?"