Increased Clinician Time Using Electronic Health Records During COVID-19 Pandemic.
Year: 2021
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic challenged how healthcare systems provided care in socially distanced formats. We hypothesized that the COVID-19 era changes in clinical care delivery models contributed to increased Electronic Health Record (EHR) related work. To evaluate the changes in time and volume metrics of EHR usage, we segregated EHR audit log metric data into PreCOVID2019 March/April/May, initial COVID2020 March/April/May, and late COVID2021 March/April/May for 1262 physician providers. We discovered significant and pragmatically meaningful increases in total average time providers spent in the EHR in minutes mean(SD) PreCOVID2019=1958(1576), Mid-COVID2020=1709(1473), Late-COVID2021=2007(1563). Differences in total time in the EHR were significant Pre-mid:p-value=<0.001, but not Pre-Late:p=0.439. Total number of messages received across all specialties increased significantly mean(SD) PreCOVID=459(389), MidCOVID=400(362), LateCOVID 521(423) Pre-Mid p-value=<0.001 and Pre-Late p-value=<0.001. We additionally found changes in total time to differ significantly across select specialties. Based on these findings we recommend further assessment of physician workload and how new factors such as telehealth are contributing to EHR usage.
Source: PubMed Central
Authors: Timothy Tsai, Mina Boazak, Eugenia R McPeek Hinz
Institution: Duke University
Language: English
Subfield: Health Information Management
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4287539880