Abstract
PURPOSE Primary care physicians spend nearly 2 hours on electronic health record (EHR) tasks per hour of direct patient care. Demand for non–face-to-face care, such as communication through a patient portal and administrative tasks, is increasing and contributing to burnout. The goal of this study was to assess time allocated by primary care physicians within the EHR as indicated by EHR user-event log data, both during clinic hours (defined as 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday through Friday) and outside clinic hours.
METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 142 family medicine physicians in a single system in southern Wisconsin. All Epic (Epic Systems Corporation) EHR interactions were captured from “event logging” records over a 3-year period for both direct patient care and non–face-to-face activities, and were validated by direct observation. EHR events were assigned to 1 of 15 EHR task categories and allocated to either during or after clinic hours.
RESULTS Clinicians spent 355 minutes (5.9 hours) of an 11.4-hour workday in the EHR per weekday per 1.0 clinical full-time equivalent: 269 minutes (4.5 hours) during clinic hours and 86 minutes (1.4 hours) after clinic hours. Clerical and administrative tasks including documentation, order entry, billing and coding, and system security accounted for nearly one-half of the total EHR time (157 minutes, 44.2%). Inbox management accounted for another 85 minutes (23.7%).
CONCLUSIONS Primary care physicians spend more than one-half of their workday, nearly 6 hours, interacting with the EHR during and after clinic hours. EHR event logs can identify areas of EHR-related work that could be delegated, thus reducing workload, improving professional satisfaction, and decreasing burnout. Direct time-motion observations validated EHR-event log data as a reliable source of information regarding clinician time allocation.
- primary care
- health information technology
- electronic health records
- workload
- burnout
- practice-based research
Footnotes
Conflicts of interest: authors report none.
Funding support: Medical student funding for the direct observation validation was provided by the Summer Student Research and Clinical Assistantship (SSRCA) program funds from the University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.
Previous presentation: This study was previously presented in part in a poster, “Work after Work: Evidence From PCP Utilization of an EHR System,” at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Conference, October 24–28, 2015, Cancun, Mexico.
- Received for publication November 7, 2016.
- Revision received April 11, 2017.
- Accepted for publication April 30, 2017.
- © 2017 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.