From dollars to hours, doctors lose out when burdened by medical documentation
At the end of the year, it’s standard practice to conduct business reviews. Hospitals and medical practices are no different, and thus, should take a close eye on a key area: time. Specifically, time lost on fuddling over medical documents, details, and corrections.
It’s an important metric to track. Time lost to excessive documentation creates a void in patient care, where hours are better spent with patients and treatment paths.
The workflow of electronic health records is an important one, allowing doctors to access data regarding their patient’s conditions. But what isn’t versatile is the time spent recording information, which not only costs hours but money too. How much? It varies, but different studies reveal a series of trends pointing to chunks of hours spent struggling with medical documentation.
For instance, a survey conducted by JAMA Internal Medicine discovered clinicians and doctors averaged 1.8 hours outside of the office on medical records, or EHR (electronic health records). The survey also revealed other key points: 58 percent of clinicians found their time spent on EHR is excessive, versus those who don’t, and at least 30 percent are spending two hours on data keeping in general.
This isn’t exactly a new problem, either. Hours spent on documentation is an issue that’s persisted for years as some investigations found, even as far back as 2016. From the linked study, conducted by the Annals of Internal Medicine, 49% of physician office hours were spent dealing with EHR.
Other studies and surveys also discovered, on average, physicians are spending 4.5 hours daily on electronic health records. If you feel like you’re drowning in paperwork, electronic or otherwise, then you aren’t alone. But it’s not as though clinicians can toss aside EHR for an alternative – electronic health records are widespread and used by a majority of healthcare services. They are effective, but tedious in massive quantities.
It’s difficult to isolate just how burdensome these documentation demands are, and doctors try to counter this by taking records during their patient visits. But even with these small workarounds, the need to maintain accurate electronic records is placing a phantom weight on the medical industry. It bleeds into healthcare quality resulting in less time with patients and excessive staff burnout.
Why is it happening?
Electronic health records now cover a wider territory, beyond only patient details, conditions, and treatments. EHR also accounts for billing and regulatory demands along with the care of data under HIPAA, expanding what must be recorded.
Other issues wedge into the record-keeping process too, such as the tools available to clinicians for recording data, the state of their IT infrastructure, and available staff (or lack thereof). As an example, infrastructure plays a key role in the creation and storage of electronic health records. But if this infrastructure is outdated, such as legacy installments, then it can hinder the processing of EHR due to crashes, stalls, hardware/software failure, and even security risks. Underperformance is a common problem with legacy, an issue that’s been around for decades, and this adds frustrating labor to recording electronic health records.
Limited technology creates bottlenecks and potential communication problems with other healthcare networks. So, clinicians aren’t only challenged by the increasing demands for invoices and record keeping, they’re hobbled by older tech. Technology, which by today’s standards, is trending towards remote care, agility, and emphasis on freely accessible records by the patient.
Inherently, the EHS isn’t a bad thing and creates an agile platform to safely deliver, analyze, and track patient information. But when combined with the pain points we’ve discussed so far, you can see where the time problem comes in.
Fighting the waves of lost time
The picture clarifies that healthcare professionals are no strangers to lost hours, and, the issue hasn’t gone away for years. It leaves providers in a challenging position: how do they address it without disrupting healthcare operations or uprooting trusted infrastructure? More so, the sources of time constraints are coming from widespread organizational shifts, not just from within a practice. You can’t alter the system, so where do you go from there?
Primarily, doctors and clinicians must look to convenient resources and tools to aid them in their documentation work. In some cases, they look to dictation software, but many available dictation platforms simply cannot keep pace with clinical demands. It’s important to use reliable tools, such as Dragon Medical One, which provides industry-leading accuracy with medical dictation. As well, the proliferation and reliance on EHR mean agile software and versatile infrastructure is the norm, and as such, tools need to keep pace with this fast-evolving market.
Conclusion
So, as a recap:
- For over 5 years clinicians and doctors are still averaging 2+ hours per day on patients, electronic or otherwise
- Recording work is done outside of regular office hours and reduces available time with patients
- Infrastructure – legacy or otherwise – can create unseen hindrances which further delay maintaining EHR
- Practitioners and healthcare experts need to take advantage of tools to improve performance
- Expanding demand for telecare and virtual care
It’s clear clinicians need help wherever possible, and dictation platforms like Dragon Medical One provide this time-conscious relief.
