The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information found that access to and analysis of documented data in electronic health records by hospitals has increased over the past 5 years, but gaps remain in the access and use in certain hospitals.
WHY IT IMPORTANT
Data from EHRs can track the time clinicians spend documenting and performing certain tasks. To measure physician burden on a national scale, the ONC analyzed four nationally representative surveys of US non-federal acute care hospitals.
Published in January, in the special health IT issue of American Journal of Managed CareTrends in Electronic Health Records ability to track documents Time examined data access and usage trends from EHR developers to quantify the amount of time clinicians spend dedicated to documenting clinical care from 2017 to 2021.
Chelsea Richwine, ONC Economist said in a recent blog post about leveraging EHR audit data to inform and improve clinical workflows, the use of audit log data to evaluate EHR burden assessment can improve clinical workflows, track performance and efficiency, and reduce document burden.
“Improving data accessibility and interpretation support through tools and dashboards can increase the utility of these data by making them more actionable for decision makers.” organization,” she said.
“This has important implications for organizations’ ability to reduce burdens, improve job satisfaction for clinicians, and reduce burnout and staff turnover – problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”
Richwine and co-author Dr. Vaishali Patel also found that a higher percentage of hospitals had access to EHR documents that used them for more purposes over time.
But data access is a problem for some hospitals.
They said in the study: “Although hospitals have increased access to EHR time-monitoring measures, lower-resourced hospitals, hospitals without trainers, and hospitals with doctors EHR developers that are not market-leading are less likely to have access reporting than their counterparts”.
ONC analysts recommend that future research efforts investigate whether the use of EHR audit log data and similar measures translates into less burden on suppliers. Are not.
TREND TO BIGGER
While burnout rates among doctors skyrocketed to all-time highs as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out – with one in five doctors planning to leave the profession – strategies such as timely EHR remediation and Well communicated as well as the following problem-solving strategies – the chart now helps reduce supplier burnout rates.
In a November 2022 report, Supplier Burnout and EHR Experience, KLAS Arch Collaborative researchers found that as of 2021, high levels of trust in organizational leadership around around EHR correlated with a lower percentage of providers reporting burnout.
They also found that reduced after-hours workloads can significantly reduce burnout.
“One key to reducing supplier burnout is a strong agreement by suppliers that their organization does a good job of EHR – specifically, the organization itself,” the KLAS researchers said in the report. The organization has done a very good job of implementing, training and supporting EHR”.
ON PROFILE
“Do [audit] More accessible data can significantly improve the ability of hospital organizations and physicians’ practices to track the amount of time their clinicians spend on EHR,” said Richwine in ONC blog post.
Furthermore, improving data access and interpretation support through tools and dashboards can increase the utility of these data by making them more actionable for users. organizational decision-makers.”
Andrea Fox is the senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
