Are Med Schools Failing Future Docs?

As the most-wired generation works toward their degrees – and gears up to practice in a whole new healthcare world – some are rethinking how much IT should be taught.

It's a safe bet that this fall's crop of new medical students is the most tech-savvy cohort yet. These are young adults, after all, who've been tapping on smartphones since they were 16, surfing the Web pretty much since they could read.

But how much information technology are they actually getting their hands on in school?

Physicians nationwide are being carroted and sticked into making meaningful use of electronic health records and other health IT, but what about the physicians of tomorrow? Many medical students have never even had the chance to make a note in an EHR, even though the technology will be inextricable from the way they'll practice from now on.

That's to say nothing of more advanced analytics training, say, or a primer in the newfangled terminology - quality measures, care teams, bundled payments - that will be the common language of the post-reform era.