Physicians Still Losing Time To EMRs

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Physicians are telling you exactly what they need from their EMR (electronic medical records) systems, and they’re not getting it. Our Smart VAR Summit revealed some of your clients’ biggest pain points, one of which is highlighted by a quote from Scott Farnsworth, corporate director of clinical systems development of Kindred Healthcare

“I’ve had physicians come to me and say, I don’t need you to make me better, I need you to make me faster. And if you don’t make me faster, I won’t use your technology. The goal should be finding places — throughout the entire system, not just the EHR — where they can be more efficient.”

Study Confirms The Need

The Journal Of the American Medical Association recently surveyed family practice physicians about their EMR use and the associated loss of free time in the day. They also worked with the American College of Physicians to extend the survey to a sample of internists. The report provides useful insights for VARs into what their clients will find most frustrating about EMRs, highlighting opportunities for increased client satisfaction.

Results

Of the 845 physicians invited to participate, 485 opened the email and 411 responded for analysis. The respondents used 61 distinct EMR systems and hailed from a broad range of practice types.

Of the nine most commonly used systems, the Veterans Affairs’ Computer Patient Record System (CPRS) was associated with the least time lost, at 20 minutes per day. All respondents were experienced EMR users. Of all respondents, 89.8 percent reported that at least one data management function was slower post-EMR adoption and 93.9 percent reported that note writing actually took more time. More than a third reported that finding and reviewing information took longer with the EMR than without, and a similar number indicated that EMRs were slower to read than physician’s notes.

Time Lost

Overall, the mean time lost for the reporting physicians was 48 minutes per clinic day, amounting to four hours per five day clinical week. For trainees, the numbers were a mean of 18 minutes lost per day. The median of all respondents who lost time was 78 minutes, or 6.5 hours per five day clinic week.

Impact

The paper concludes with a warning to policymakers: “The loss of free time that our respondents reported was large and pervasive and could decrease access or increase costs of care. Policy makers should consider these time costs in future EMR mandates.  Ambulatory practices may benefit from approaches used by high-performing practices — the use of scribes, standing orders, talking instead of email — to recapture time lost on EHR. We can only speculate as to whether better computer skills, shorter clinic assignments with proportionally less exposure to EMR time costs, or other factors account for the trainees’ smaller per-day time loss.”

Similar Results

A separate study out of California that focused on family medicine residents at two academic medical centers found that they ended up spending an extra 16 minutes on documentation after an EMR system was implemented, and that they saw a 30 percent drop in daily productivity.

For Your Clients

Your clients are bound to be having their own reservations about the time drain EMRs bring to their practices, and facts like these will only support their concerns. These results, however, support the need for not only well-planned training on your part, but also the potential for long-term support and efficiency monitoring services you can offer to your clients as a valuable service.

Also, clients will need to understand the fact that systems become easier with time, and that patience, in the end, will pay off for both them and their patients.

Going Deeper

For more about EMR adoption trends, despite the difficulties, read this article on the rates of paper chart use among physicians