A large university hospital just lost all of its patients over the course of a month after a new policy went into place, only allowing providers to have one patient’s chart open at a time in the electronic medical record (EMR).

“We never got our diet orders,” a veteran nurse from the stroke floor reported. “The doctors were always busy with something else.”

“They usually had their backs to us when we asked,” another young nurse recounted. “They either said okay, grunted or spat at the computer, I’m not sure which.”

The nutritionist demonstrates a backlog of pages she sent requesting Jevity 1.2 be changed to TwoCal tube feeds and then to FourCal, FourthousandCal and SOSCal, all unanswered and unfulfilled.

In addition to the diet orders, telemetry was never renewed, fluids never discontinued, activity orders never updated, and no one was flagged for discharge.

Residents were not available to answer questions for this piece, as they were too busy finishing one note, one set of admission orders, or spitting at the computer.