Physicians Are Sick of Their EHRs. They Need to Be Simpler

It’s time to rethink the use of EHRs for both physicians and patients. For years, they’ve been an electronic version of a paper chart, but that’s not working anymore, and physicians are feeling it.

While EHRs don’t work for most physicians, most patients love them. According to a recent study published by Annals of Family Medicine, two thirds of physicians reported that EHR use negatively impacted the patient experience, but 91% of patients said EHR use had a positive impact.

Physicians say they’re burned out and less attentive with their increasing EHR workload. And, if physicians suffer, patient care suffers, too. Improving the way EHRs are used and implemented can improve physician experience, which will ultimately improve patient experience.

So what do we do?

Embracing AI opportunities is one way to do it. Penn Highlands Healthcare in Pennsylvania partnered with AI software company Regard to take advantage of the benefits of AI.

Jaimes Blunt, Vice President of Solutions Management at Altera Digital Health, Inc., says automation is another way. He offers his insights on improving EHR use in healthcare at HIMSS 2023 in Chicago.

Jaimes’s thoughts:

We’re focused on improving experiences for providers, and the downstream effect of that is gonna be improving the experience for patients as well. When we sat back and we looked at what EHRs are in the market today, they’re really electronic representations of a paper chart. We want to move away from that.

We want to address fatigue that the physicians are facing, all clinicians are facing. We want to address staffing shortages. We can do that by changing the frontend experiences, making it easier to learn and understand how the product’s operating and provide more information to the physician at the point of care.

As we’re doing that, we can also start to address some of the revenue challenges that organizations are facing across the U.S., um, by leveraging the tools that we have to analyze how back offices are working, provide more automation using things like robotic process automation so that we can continue to grow and reduce the burden, not just on providers, but also on back office.

And, like I said, the end stream of that is if we improve the experiences for providers, we can improve the care that we’re delivering to the patients.

Article written by Adrienne St. Clair