U.S. clinicians spend 50% more time in EHR than those in other countries

A pair of studies aims to examine just how much time American clinicians spend in the electronic health record – and how it impacts their relationship with patients. A pair of studies recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Medical Care aims to use electronic health record data to analyze how clinicians spend their time.

The JAMA study, which compared metadata of clinicians in the United States with those in Canada, Northern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and Oceania, found that U.S. clinicians spent an average of 90 minutes a day actively using the EHR – compared with non-U.S. clinicians, who spent about an hour a day in their EHRs.

Meanwhile, the Medical Care study analyzed primary care exam lengths using EHR time stamps, finding that the average exam time lasted 1.2 minutes longer than scheduled.