Physician EHR Use, Workload Trumping Face Time with Patients

A new AMA study shows that physician EHR use takes up nearly 50 percent of providers' day-to-day tasks, outranking patient interaction by nearly double.

For every hour physicians spend with patients, they spend another two hours on physician EHR use and deskwork, according to a recent study from the American Medical Association. The AMA study highlights what many consider the primary issue with the increasing prevalence of physician EHR use: the significant workload the technology adds for providers.

Overall, the study shows that providers spend 27 percent of their total working time interacting face-to-face with patients and 49.2 percent of their time doing EHR or deskwork. Physicians also spend an average of two hours working on EHR data entry outside of their office hours.

According to Steven J. Stack, MD, a past president of the AMA, these results simply confirm what many in the healthcare space had considered to be true. "This study reveals what many physicians are feeling – data entry and administrative tasks are cutting into the doctor-patient time that is central to medicine and a primary reason many of us became physicians," Stack said in a press release...