Abstract
[This is an excerpt.] In the United States, 86 percent of office-based and 94 percent of hospital-based physicians currently use an electronic health record (EHR), incentivized by the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. While intended to improve care quality and efficiency, the EHR has inadvertently burdened clinicians and is now considered a leading cause of their burnout. Clinician burnout (a syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment) is associated with higher rates of medical errors, health care costs, and clinician turnover. In February 2020, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology published a strategy on reducing EHR-related burden, further signaling the urgency for health care leaders to optimize the EHR. To shift the pendulum from clinician burnout to well-being, it is imperative that health care organizations take action to optimize the EHR. EHR optimization relies on human factors engineering, a science that considers the benefits and fallibility of human interaction with a system. Optimization requires a tailored, multipronged strategy that incorporates an organization’s clinician-identified pain points, clinical informatics and technology resources, and clinician and leadership buy-in. This paper provides strategies to help health care organizations embark on their EHR optimization journey toward improved patient care and clinician well-being. [To read more, click View Resource.]
This resource is found in our Actionable Strategies for Health Organizations: Improving Workload & Workflows (Reducing Administrative Burdens).
