Providers Lose 4 Hours Weekly Using EHRs

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

After EHR Implementation, doctors are losing an average of 4 hours each week tending to the new technology.

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals doctors lose an average of four hours to documentation every week after EHR implementation. The study, conducted by researchers from the National Library of Medicine's Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, used information from a 2012 survey from the American College of Physicians.

They found the mean loss of time per day for physicians after implementation was 48 minutes. iHealth Beat reports that, specifically, physicians noted the following disruptions after an EHR implementation:

• 89.8 percent reported at least one data management function was slower
• 63.9 percent said the time spent taking notes increased
• 33.9 percent revealed the time spent finding and reviewing patient data took longer
• 32.2 percent of respondents said they spent more time reading other clinicians' notes

Dr. Clement McDonald, lead author of the study, says in an article for U.S. News, “Humans like to do things quickly and efficiently. You can’t always do something magically faster with technology. It simply takes longer [to enter patient information into a computer]. There is already so much to do and you have to look at patient safety.”

This is a common problem with research showing that, on average, providers spend 44 percent of their time on EHR work and only 28 percent of their time seeing patients. This can add up to 4,000 more clicks in a 10 hour shift.