EHR Usability Gets an ‘F’ Grade, New Research Finds

New research has found that electronic health records (EHRs)--as currently designed, implemented and regulated--lack usability as a necessary feature, leading the American Medical Association (AMA) to again urge for improved usability.

The poor usability has resulted in EHRs that are extremely hard to use compared to other common technologies. Poor EHR usability was also found to be highly correlated with physician burnout, according to the research.

The study, posted recently in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, involved surveying nearly 900 physicians on EHR usability, asking them to grade system usability on a 1 to 100 scale. The average score from the study sample ended up being a 45.9, which researchers noted “is in the bottom 9 percent of scores across previous studies and categorized in the ‘not acceptable’ range or with a grade of F.”

As it relates to burnout, researchers found that the odds of burnout dropped 3 percent for every one point that respondents more positively rated their EHR usability experience.

“While the study was conducted by leading clinical institutions in collaboration with the AMA, the findings will not come as a surprise to anyone who practices medicine. Too many physicians have experienced the demoralizing effects of cumbersome EHRs that interfere with providing first-rate medical care to patients,” Patrice A. Harris, M.D., AMA president, said in a statement.

Many stakeholders would likely agree with Harris that the study’s results are not surprising. Earlier this year, researchers with the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association (MHA), the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Harvard Global Health Institute, collaborated to issue a noteworthy report on physician burnout; findings from the report unsurprisingly revealed that inefficient EHRs are one of several leading causes of burnout among healthcare providers.

In recent years, EHR-cause physician burnout has been a hot-button issue in healthcare IT circles, perhaps ever since a commonly referenced study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2016 found that for every hour physicians provide direct clinical face time to patients, nearly two additional hours are spent on EHR and desk work within the clinic day.

Now, the attention is turning to what can be done by clinical IT leaders and others to reduce the burden that these systems place on end users. To that end, MedStar, the largest provider organization in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, and the AMA have been two organizations that have taken the lead on studies that have examined the association between EHR usability and patient safety, and a new campaign from them aims to push for changes to address the known risks to patient safety and clinician burnout that stem from poor EHR usability.

AMA’s Harris added, “It is a national imperative to overhaul the design and use of EHRs and reframe the technology to focus primarily on its most critical function - helping physicians care for their patients. Significantly enhancing EHR usability is key and the AMA is working to ensure a new generation of EHRs are designed to prioritize time with patients, rather than overload physicians with type-and-click tasks.”