For Physicians. By Physicians.™
For Physicians. By Physicians.™
The conversion to electronic health record (EHR) is supposed to improve patient care and medical error by
However, healthcare providers continue to find EHRs challenging, especially when it comes to user experience. Usability challenges lead to inefficiencies that contribute to clinician frustration and patient dissatisfaction. Common complaints include screen displays that have confusing layouts and extraneous information coupled with workflow sequences that are redundant and burdensome. Then, there are alerts that interrupt workflow with irrelevant information.
A study (J Am Med Inform Assoc., 2018) illustrates the wide variability in task duration, clicks, and accuracy when completing basic EH functions across EHR products from the same vendor and between products from different vendors. Time and the number of clicks to perform certain tasks varied almost tenfold.
For example, a simple order of Tylenol had an error rate ranging from 0 to 30 percent. It took from a low of 14 clicks to a high of 62, with a time range from 45 seconds to 1 minute 10 seconds.
Why do these variations occur, considering that EHR vendors are required to provide a user-centered design approach and conduct usability testing of certain EHR features near the end of the development process? A major culprit is local site customization, meaning that the layout and type of information presented on the screen can be altered. There are no performance guidelines or mandated requirements for testing the usability and safety of implemented EHRs. Perhaps the time has come for mandated performance standards to help ensure that all implemented EHRs have usable and safe systems that reduce both medical error rate and click rate.
A usability and safety analysis of electronic health records: a multi-center study
The Future of Obstetrics and Gynecology: MACRA, Electronic Health Records, and More
Please log in to ObGFirst to access this page
OBG Project CME requires a modern web browser (Internet Explorer 10+, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge). Certain educational activities may require additional software to view multimedia, presentation, or printable versions of their content. These activities will be marked as such and will provide links to the required software. That software may be: Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Media Player, or Real Networks Real One Player.
This educational activity may contain discussion of published and/or investigational uses of agents that are not indicated by the FDA. The planners of this activity do not recommend the use of any agent outside of the labeled indications.
The opinions expressed in the educational activity are those of the faculty and do not necessarily represent the views of the planners. Please refer to the official prescribing information for each product for discussion of approved indications, contraindications, and warnings.
Participants have an implied responsibility to use the newly acquired information to enhance patient outcomes and their own professional development. The information
presented in this activity is not meant to serve as a guideline for patient management. Any procedures, medications, or other courses of diagnosis or treatment discussed or suggested in this activity should not be used by clinicians without evaluation of their patient’s conditions and possible contraindications and/or dangers in use, review of any applicable manufacturer’s product information, and comparison with recommendations of other authorities.
Jointly provided by
