Doctors Work 2 Hours on EHR Tasks For Every 1 Hour of Time With Patients – Are You OK With That?

The following is a guest blog post by Wayne Crandall, President & CEO of NoteSwift.

At NoteSwift, we’re passionate about providing clinicians with the tools and workflow support they need so they can focus on delivering great care to their patients. It’s become increasingly clear over the past few years that EHR workflows are a big frustration for many doctors. This leads us to today’s question:

As a healthcare industry, are we satisfied with a system that forces clinicians to spend two hours inputting and completing EHR records for every one hour of actual time with patients? Is this the kind of health care we aspire to provide?

In thinking about this topic, I’m reminded of a blog I read a couple years ago which passionately addressed the issue of EHR time burdens from the perspective of a physician. Hear the passion in the author’s voice, and consider the tips and workflow adjustments he’s been forced to adopt in order to minimize the time they spend in EHR work.

The author calls the amount of time many EHRs require a “national disgrace” because it pulls doctors away from time with patients. We hear this story from nearly every clinician we talk to — it’s painful and frustrating to train for years to care for patients, yet feel forced to spend most of the day typing notes and clicking EHR check boxes.

A recent white paper looking at studies across the industry backs up this frustration with even more data. Doctors today are forced to spend two hours on EHR entry for every one hour of patient care. This EHR time burden is directly connected to the increase in physician burnout being reported across nearly every physician specialty. You can access this white paper here.

I believe it’s our obligation as an industry to continue improving our EHR workflows to better serve clinicians working on the front line of health care and who need more time to build relationships with patients, not EHR workflows.

At NoteSwift, we believe there is no reason for a clinician to spend 2 hours manually completing an EHR record, and we are working on exciting A.I. solutions to reduce the time doctors spend in their EHRs. Our solution, Samantha, the real-time EHR transcriptionist, allows clinicians to dictate the patient narrative one time; from there, powerful A.I. parses the narrative, creates structured data elements, adds those elements across the entire EHR, and offers the clinician a review screen to finalize the note. The entire process is automated, accurate, and efficient.

The author ends his blog with the following sentence: “Every day on my way into work I make a conscious decision to do everything possible to spend face-to-face time with patients.” I think this is a great mantra for doctors to adopt, and it’s the responsibility of all of us in health care to continue improving our EHR workflows to make better patient care a reality.

To receive your complimentary copy of this white paper, “Physician Burnout By The Numbers,” click here. You’ll receive instant access to the paper as a resource for you and your team.

About Wayne Crandall
Wayne Crandall’s career in technology spans sales, marketing, product management, strategic development and operations. Wayne was a co-founder, executive officer, and senior vice president of sales, marketing and business development at Nuance Communications and was responsible for growing the company to over $120M following the acquisition of Dragon and SpeechWorks.

Prior to joining the NoteSwift team, Wayne was President and CEO of CYA Technologies and then took over as President of enChoice, which specialized in ECM systems and services, when they purchased CYA.

Wayne joined NoteSwift, Inc. at its inception, working with founder Dr. Chris Russell to build the team from the ground up. Wayne has continued to guide the company’s growth and evolution, resulting in the development of the industry’s first AI-powered EHR Virtual Assistant, Samantha(TM).

NoteSwift is the leading provider of EHR Virtual Assistants and a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

   

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