"From a charting standpoint, the sins of commission easily outnumber the sins of omission. Our group’s progress note template begins with a summary that eventually becomes the narrative for the discharge summary. Most of the time, most of the important stuff is in there. It’s just obscured by what data scientists technically describe as 'oodles' of no-longer-relevant details. Like a package of cheap ramen, the single cube of chicken meat is in there. Your job is to find it.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we keep simply adding details to a note rather than subtracting the no-longer relevant ones?"

Craig Bowron is an internal medicine physician and can be reached at his self-titled site, Craig Bowron, MD.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, "Bloated notes are a huge problem and a time suck." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/05/bloated-notes-are-a-huge-problem-and-a-time-suck.html)