Two new academic papers raise questions about physician burnout and patient safety risks associated with EHRs, according to MedCity News.
Here are four things to know:
1. The first paper is a study published in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education which found first-year residents in internal medicine spent five to seven hours a day reading and entering data into EHRs.
2. The study's investigators included students, residents, faculty and IT professionals at New York Methodist Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College and St. Georges University School of Medicine in Grenada.
3. Mark W. Friedberg, MD, of Rand Corp., took a look at how physician professional dissatisfaction can be a safety risk and found that physicians reported frustrations with certain aspects of EHRs that can undermine patient safety, such as crowded and poorly designed user interfaces, lack of health information exchange and degradation of the quality of clinical documentation.
4. Dr. Friedberg recommended that executives at hospitals and healthcare systems pay attention to complaints about EHR usability.
