How to Enhance EHR Use Measures to Mitigate Clinician Burnout

This EHR use study, plus many more, revealed EHR performance measures and variations that led health IT professionals and developers to increase focus on patient care and clinician burnout.

Although audit logs do not always tell the complete story, they can offer critical data and implications. For example, the previously noted JAMIA study authors leveraged audit logs to reveal female physicians spend more time on the EHR than their male counterparts.

Reporting EHR use data could also result in accurate, meaningful, and current EHR use measurements, which could trigger policy, regulatory, or workflow changes, Melnick, Sinski, and Krumholz wrote.

EHR use measures should have evidence that links it to a particular outcome, must target a poor performance area, and must produce actionable and usable results that are relevant to healthcare stakeholders, the trio recommended.