Richard Rathe, MD

Associate Professor of Family Medicine (ret.) and Medical Informatician

‘Patient Care’ Articles

Thoughts on the Approaching COVID19 Pandemic

Posted: Mar 1st, 2020 •• Category: Medicine, Patient Care

I’ve annotated this NY Times graphic, rounding the estimates for COVID19 (aka the 2019 novel coronavirus) to 2% mortality and 2 people infected for every one who has the disease. What this suggests is the infection rate will be similar to a bad cold season, but unlike the common cold, a significant number of people […]

ShortNote – Clinical Shorthand 1.0

Posted: Aug 17th, 2017 •• Category: EMR, HPI, Patient Care

I have worked with home-grown and commercial Electronic Medical Records for over thirty years. The use of “dot commands” (a period followed by a trigger phrase) is about as old as personal computing. (I first encountered dot commands in the WordStar word processing program during the 1980s!) These commands generally fall into three categories: a) links to retrieve […]

Patient Instructions Card with Advice on Common Problems

Posted: Aug 11th, 2015 •• Category: Medicine, Patient Care

Patients who are actively engaged with their health have better outcomes. Good communication is key. I made this Patient Instructions Card about six months ago and have been very pleased with it. I’ve turned it into a generic PDF with custom name, phone and tobacco resource fields. Fill in your particulars and have it printed at 50% on card […]