3 Ways to Make Electronic Health Records Less Time-Consuming for Physicians

Physicians in the United States are justifiably upset by the amount of time they spend using electronic health records (EHRs). This is true across primary care physicians and specialists, and it contributes to physician burnout. The annual cost of physicians spending half of their time using EHRs is over $365 billion (a billion dollars per day) more than the United States spends treating any major class of diseases and about equal to what the country spends on public primary and secondary education instruction. This is a problem that can be solved now by taking three steps.

We are optimistic that better days are on the horizon for clinicians and that we are past the nadir of the EHR usability problem. Improvements will not occur automatically though, and there needs to be widespread recognition that physicians spending half their time using EHRs is a health care crisis that must be fixed. There should be a mandate for payers to standardize and reduce their documentation requirements. Equally as important, we should strengthen APIs and secure data-sharing standards to unleash transformative innovation. These efforts, combined with providers diligently reviewing and optimizing their EHR workflows, will transform EHRs from being a time sink to a time saver and joy to use.