News: Physicians spend 16 minutes per patient using EHRs, study says

Physicians spend an average of 16 minutes and 14 seconds per patient encounter using electronic health records (EHRs), according to a study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Of this time, 33% was chart review, 24% documentation, and 17% ordering functions were the areas accounting for the highest allocation of time.

The study included data from roughly 100 million patient encounters with approximately 155,000 physicians from 417 health systems.

Researchers noted that the distribution of time spent using EHRs varied greatly within specialties, while the proportion of time spent on various clinically focused functions was similar.

The amount of time that providers spend using EHRs to support their care process has become a core concern for the U.S. healthcare system. According to the researchers, “given the potential effect on patient care and the high costs related to this time, particularly for medical specialists whose work is largely cognitive, these findings warrant more precise documentation of the time physicians invest in these clinically focused EHR functions.”

They also wrote that “The time spent using EHRs to support care delivery constitutes a large portion of the physicians’ day, and wide variation suggests opportunities to optimize systems and processes.”

Editor’s note: Click here to read the study appearing in Annals of Internal Medicine. To read more about CDI professionals’ role in reducing EHR-related burdens, read this article from the March/April 2019 CDI Journal.