Do Doctors Hate EHRs?
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Usability and productivity are absent in many EHR systems leading doctors to be wary of electronic health records
A strong sentiment for sure, but some are convinced doctors really do hate electronic health record software. InformationWeek Healthcare editor David Carr writes, “I was surprised how unanimously and passionately dissatisfied most doctors are with the usability of this software, which they see as draining rather than enhancing their productivity.”
Carr spoke with pediatrician Dave Denton who told him, "I use several EHRs in my clinic and hospital. None of them allow transmission of data between systems. They all are encumbered by poor graphic user interfaces that make it hard to see patient data in a way that makes sense and helps patient care. It is actually much harder to take care of sick patients in the ICU with our new hospital system.
“They also tend to hide the pertinent by scattering it through the program and displaying all types of ancillary data, time stamps, and formatted notes that are inserted to ensure appropriate coding, but get in the way of seeing what is important. I have made several errors by failing to find the correct information in the chart because it was buried in the note. Finding what is important has become a treasure hunt."
Robert G. Hill Jr., MD weighed the pros and cons of EHRs and told InformationWeek Healthcare, “We can access records more easily, and that's helpful. But our study shows we spend 44 percent of our time in data entry, which takes away from seeing more patients. We're the most highly paid and highly trained providers in the ED, and we spend a lot of our time doing data entry, and that's not good. It's a waste of resources."
Health IT Outcomes reported one the same study Hill refers to, conducted by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, the showed physicians are only spending 28 percent of their time seeing patients, in addition to the 44 percent of their time one EHR work.
Carr writes for InformationWeek Healthcare, “Typical lament: ‘How did IT get more powerful than the people who actually care for patients? The answer is that IT charges by the hour, while Docs can be made to do more work for less money, that is, add two hours work to every day without additional compensation. If we asked IT to do the hard work, we'd have to pay them.’
“I don't want to quote by name without permission, but another commenter identified as a medical director for a healthcare group pointed out that any drug or medical device would have to be proven in FDA testing before being adopted into a hospital, while EHR software ‘impacts quality of care, and expecting to improve it 'on the job' causes delays in care, complications and death. Piece of advice, if anyone of you or your family has to go to a hospital make sure someone stays with the patient because the nurses will be on the computer.’”
Carr concludes, “Even those arguing that good EHR software is possible tended to acknowledge that a lot of EHR software is crummy.”