Can Performance Analytics Impact the EHR Clinical Documentation Conundrum?

U.S. hospitals and health systems have spent billions of dollars on EHRs to digitize the episode of care. But if physician usability issues remain, how will healthcare providers ever achieve an ever-increasing return on their investments? The answer is to focus on EHR usability.

Usability issues can be addressed through a multifaceted approach that includes better training, re-engineered workflows, user personalization, and fewer EHR customizations. A step-wise strategy to assess and optimize one EHR function at a time has emerged as a pragmatic, cost-effective approach to EHR optimization and activation.

While some physicians are extremely proficient with EHR templates for clinical documentation, others still lean on dictation, scribes, and speech recognition with human clinical documentation experts in the background to clean, correct, and review system output. Physicians are also encouraged to use the automated documentation tools within EHRs, such as text messages and voice-to-text tools using mobile devices.