America Braces For Daylight Saving Time - And Missing Medical Records

'One hundred years after Congress passed the first daylight saving legislation, more and more people are doubting the wisdom of changing the clocks,' writes PBS, noting that it actually makes Americans use more electricity and consume more gasoline.

'If you can find anyone who supports this, they're probably just trolling you,' writes Inc magazine's contributor editor, adding 'Literally everyone hates it... It's almost impossible to find anyone who still supports this insane, anachronistic idea, which is leftover from a German coal conservation idea during World War I, and our heck-we'll-try-anything panic during the energy crisis of the 1970s.' In fact, one study found that while consumer spending increases a bit at the start of daylight savings, it drops a full 3.5 percent in the wrong direction when it ends. (Which will happen tonight in most U.S. states at 2:00 a.m.)

And now USA Today points out that hospital software 'still can't handle daylight saving time:
Epic Systems, one of the most popular electronic health records software systems used by hospitals, can delete records or require cumbersome workarounds when clocks are set back for an hour -- prompting many hospitals to opt for paper records for part of the night shift. And it happens every year... Dr. Steven Stack, a past president of the American Medical Association, called the glitches 'perplexing' and 'unacceptable,' considering that hospitals spend millions of dollars on these systems, and Apple and Google seem to have dealt with seasonal time changes long ago...
Carol Hawthorne-Johnson, an intensive care unit nurse in California, said her hospital doesn't shut down the Epic system during the fall time change. But she's come to expect that the vital signs she enters into the system from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday will be deleted when the clock falls back to 1 a.m. One hour's worth of electronic record-keeping 'is gone,' she said. Hospital staff have learned to deal with it by taking extra chart notes by hand... Many hospitals use Cerner, another major electronic medical records company. Those hospitals plan for Cerner to be down during the time change, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.