News: Nuance survey shows physician response to documentation improvement efforts

Of the 187 physicians who responded to a recent survey, only 25% were involved in evaluating or implementing new clinical documentation technologies at their organization. However, when asked how important they considered being involved, 70% said extremely important and 27% said very important.

The results come from a new study “Physician Attitudes Toward Clinical Documentation Technology & Processes,” released January 22 by Nuance.

 

“Physicians see technology as a growing portion of how they do their jobs and they want to be involved in the decisions,” the report states.

 

The survey bears out the growing physician dissatisfaction with what they perceive to be increases in administrative burden associated with patient care. Most respondents (98%) indicated that post-discharge queries were somewhat (33%), very (47%), or extremely (18%) disruptive. Yet, only 3% found concurrent, CDI queries “extremely disruptive;” although most (58%) still found concurrent queries “very disruptive.”

 

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, 71% of physicians indicated they would most likely respond more frequently if CDI queries were embedded into their electronic health record workflow, according to the report.

 

Physicians are “being saddled with processes that distract them from clinical care, while being excluded from the decision-making process of choosing things that impact them every day,” Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Communications, stated in a press release regarding the report. “Technology should be simple and work for physicians – not the other way around.”

 

CDI professionals can play an important role in helping to represent physician interests in electronic health record implementation as well as working with physicians on best practices to ensure the integrity of the health record overall. In an October 2013 ACDIS position paper on the matter, the ACDIS Advisory Board outlined several areas of potential focus for CDI professionals while highlighting areas most susceptible for documentation risks.