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Objective: To evaluate the ability of routinely collected electronic health record (EHR) use measures to predict clinical work units at increased risk of burnout and potentially most in need of targeted interventions., Methods: In this observational study of primary care physicians, we compiled clinical workload and EHR efficiency measures, then linked these measures to 2 years of well-being surveys (using the Stanford Professional Fulfillment Index) conducted from April 1, 2019, through October 16, 2020. Physicians were grouped into training and confirmation data sets to develop predictive models for burnout. We used gradient boosting classifier and other prediction modeling algorithms to quantify the predictive performance by the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC)., Results: Of 278 invited physicians from across 60 clinics, 233 (84%) completed 396 surveys. Physicians were 67% women with a median age category of 45 to 49 years. Aggregate burnout score was in the high range (≥3.325/10) on 111 of 396 (28%) surveys. Gradient boosting classifier of EHR use measures to predict burnout achieved an AUC of 0.59 (95% CI, 0.48 to 0.77) and an area under the precision-recall curve of 0.29 (95% CI, 0.20 to 0.66). Other models' confirmation set AUCs ranged from 0.56 (random forest) to 0.66 (penalized linear regression followed by dichotomization). Among the most predictive features were physician age, team member contributions to notes, and orders placed with user-defined preferences. Clinic-level aggregate measures identified the top quartile of clinics with 56% sensitivity and 85% specificity., Conclusion: In a sample of primary care physicians, routinely collected EHR use measures demonstrated limited ability to predict individual burnout and moderate ability to identify high-risk clinics., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: Variation exists in the capabilities of electronic healthcare records (EHRs) systems and the frequency of their use by primary care physicians (PCPs) from different settings. We aimed to examine the factors associated with everyday EHRs use by PCPs, characterise the EHRs features available to PCPs, and to identify the impact of practice settings on feature availability., Study Design: Cross-sectional study., Methods: PCPs from 20 countries completed cross-sectional online survey between June and September 2020. Responses which reported frequency of EHRs use were retained. Associations between everyday EHRs use and PCP and practice factors (country, urbanicity, and digital maturity) were explored using multivariable logistic regression analyses. The effect of practice factors on the variation in availability of ten EHRs features was estimated using Cramer's V., Results: Responses from 1520 out of 1605 PCPs surveyed (94·7%) were retained. Everyday EHRs use was reported by 91·2% of PCPs. Everyday EHRs use was associated with PCPs working >28 h per week, having more years of experience using EHRs, country of employment, and higher digital maturity. EHRs features concerning entering, and retrieving data were available to most PCPs. Few PCPs reported having access to tools for 'interactive patient education' (37·3%) or 'home monitoring and self-testing of chronic conditions' (34·3%). Country of practice was associated with availability of all EHRs features (Cramer's V range: 0·2-0·6), particularly with availability of tools enabling patient EHRs access (Cramer's V: 0·6, P < 0.0001). Greater feature availability of EHRs features was observed with greater digital maturity., Conclusions: EHRs features intended for patient use were uncommon across countries and levels of digital maturity. Systems-level research is necessary to identify the country-specific barriers impeding the implementation of EHRs features in primary care, particularly of EHRs features enabling patient interaction with EHRs, to develop strategies to improve systems-wide EHRs use., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Importance: Primary care physicians (PCPs) report multitasking during workdays while processing electronic inbox messages, but scant systematic information exists on attention switching and its correlates in the health care setting., Objectives: To describe PCPs' frequency of attention switching associated with electronic inbox work, identify potentially modifiable factors associated with attention switching and inbox work duration, and compare the relative association of attention switching and other factors with inbox work duration., Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study of the work of 1275 PCPs in an integrated group serving 4.5 million patients used electronic health record (EHR) access logs from March 1 to 31, 2018, to evaluate PCPs' frequency of attention switching. Statistical analysis was performed from October 15, 2018, to August 28, 2020., Main Outcomes and Measures: Attention switching was defined as switching between the electronic inbox, other EHR work, and non-EHR periods. Inbox work duration included minutes spent on electronic inbox message views and related EHR tasks. Multivariable models controlled for the exposures., Results: The 1275 PCPs studied (721 women [56.5%]; mean [SD] age, 45.9 [8.5] years) had a mean (SD) of 9.0 (7.6) years of experience with the medical group and received a mean (SD) of 332.6 (148.3) (interquartile range, 252-418) new inbox messages weekly. On workdays, PCPs made a mean (SD) of 79.4 (21.8) attention switches associated with inbox work and did a mean (SD) 64.2 (18.7) minutes of inbox work over the course of 24 hours on workdays. In the model for attention switching, each additional patient secure message beyond the reference value was associated with 0.289 (95% CI, 0.217-0.362) additional switches, each additional results message was associated with 0.203 (95% CI, 0.127-0.278) additional switches, each additional request message was associated with 0.190 (95% CI, 0.124-0.257) additional switches, and each additional administrative message was associated with 0.262 (95% CI, 0.166-0.358) additional switches. Having a panel (a list of patients assigned to a primary care team) with more elderly patients (0.144 switches per percentage increase [95% CI, 0.009-0.278]) and higher inbox work duration (0.468 switches per additional minute of inbox work [95% CI, 0.411-0.524]) were also associated with higher attention switching involving the inbox. In the model for inbox work duration, each additional patient secure message beyond the reference value was associated with 0.151 (95% CI, 0.085-0.217) additional minutes, each additional results message was associated with 0.338 (95% CI, 0.272-0.404) additional minutes, each additional request message was associated with 0.101 (95% CI, 0.041-0.161) additional minutes, and each additional administrative message was associated with 0.179 (95% CI, 0.093-0.265) additional minutes. A higher percentage of the panel's patients initiating messages (0.386 minutes per percentage increase [95% CI, 0.026-0.745]) and attention switches (0.373 minutes per switch [95% CI, 0.328-0.419]) were also associated with higher inbox work duration. In addition, working at a medical center where all PCPs had high inbox work duration was independently associated with high or low inbox work duration., Conclusions and Relevance: This study suggests that PCPs make frequent attention switches during workdays while processing electronic inbox messages. Message quantity was associated with both attention switching and inbox work duration. Physician and patient panel characteristics had less association with attention switching and inbox work duration. Assisting PCPs with message quantity might help modulate both attention switching and inbox work duration.

Background: Claims-based algorithms based on administrative claims data are frequently used to identify an individual's primary care physician (PCP). The validity of these algorithms in the US Medicare population has not been assessed., Objective: To determine the agreement of the PCP identified by claims algorithms with the PCP of record in electronic health record data., Data: Electronic health record and Medicare claims data from older adults with diabetes., Subjects: Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries with diabetes (N=3658) ages 65 years and older as of January 1, 2008, and medically housed at a large academic health system., Measures: Assignment algorithms based on the plurality and majority of visits and tie breakers determined by either last visit, cost, or time from first to last visit., Results: The study sample included 15,624 patient-years from 3658 older adults with diabetes. Agreement was higher for algorithms based on primary care visits (range, 78.0% for majority match without a tie breaker to 85.9% for majority match with the longest time from first to last visit) than for claims to all visits (range, 25.4% for majority match without a tie breaker to 63.3% for majority match with the amount billed tie breaker). Percent agreement was lower for nonwhite individuals, those enrolled in Medicaid, individuals experiencing a PCP change, and those with >10 physician visits., Conclusions: Researchers may be more likely to identify a patient's PCP when focusing on primary care visits only; however, these algorithms perform less well among vulnerable populations and those experiencing fragmented care.

Introduction: The goal of this study was to characterize current practices in the transition of care between the emergency department and primary care setting, with an emphasis on the use of the electronic medical record (EMR)., Methods: Using literature review and modified Delphi technique, we created and tested a pilot survey to evaluate for face and content validity. The final survey was then administered face-to-face at eight different clinical sites across the country. A total of 52 emergency physicians (EP) and 49 primary care physicians (PCP) were surveyed and analyzed. We performed quantitative analysis using chi-square test. Two independent coders performed a qualitative analysis, classifying answers by pre-defined themes (inter-rater reliability > 80%). Participants' answers could cross several pre-defined themes within a given question., Results: EPs were more likely to prefer telephone communication compared with PCPs (30/52 [57.7%] vs. 3/49 [6.1%] P < 0.0001), whereas PCPs were more likely to prefer using the EMR for discharge communication compared with EPs (33/49 [67.4%] vs. 13/52 [25%] p < 0.0001). EPs were more likely to report not needing to communicate with a PCP when a patient had a benign condition (23/52 [44.2%] vs. 2/49 [4.1%] p < 0.0001), but were more likely to communicate if the patient required urgent follow-up prior to discharge from the ED (33/52 [63.5%] vs. 20/49 [40.8%] p = 0.029). When discussing barriers to effective communication, 51/98 (52%) stated communication logistics, followed by 49/98 (50%) who reported setting/environmental constraints and 32/98 (32%) who stated EMR access was a significant barrier., Conclusion: Significant differences exist between EPs and PCPs in the transition of care process. EPs preferred telephone contact synchronous to the encounter whereas PCPs preferred using the EMR asynchronous to the encounter. Providers believe EP-to-PCP contact is important for improving patient care, but report varied expectations and multiple barriers to effective communication. This study highlights the need to optimize technology for an effective transition of care from the ED to the outpatient setting., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.

Background and Objectives: Electronic health records (EHRs) have had mixed effects on the workflow of ambulatory primary care. In this study, we update previous research on the time required to care for patients in primary care clinics with EHRs., Methods: We directly observed family physician (FP) attendings, residents, and their ambulatory patients in 982 visits in clinics affiliated with 10 residencies of the Residency Research Network of Texas. The FPs were purposely chosen to reflect a diversity of patient care styles. We measured total visit time, previsit chart time, face-to-face time, non-face time, out-of-hours EHR work time, and total EHR work time., Results: The mean (SD) visit length was 35.8 (16.6) minutes, not counting resident precepting time. The mean time components included 2.9 (3.8) minutes working in the EHR prior to entering the room, 16.5 (9.2) minutes of face-to-face time not working in the EHR, 2.0 (2.1) minutes working in the EHR in the room (which occurred in 73.4% of the visits), 7.5 (7.5) minutes of non-face time (mostly EHR time), and 6.9 (7.6) minutes of EHR work outside of normal clinic operational hours (which occurred in 64.6% of the visits). The total time and total EHR time varied only slightly between faculty physicians, third-year and second-year residents. Multivariable linear regression analysis revealed many factors associated with total visit time including patient, physician, and clinic infrastructure factors., Conclusions: Primary care physicians spent more time working in the EHR than they spent in face-to-face time with patients in clinic visits.

Purpose: Primary care physicians spend nearly 2 hours on electronic health record (EHR) tasks per hour of direct patient care. Demand for non-face-to-face care, such as communication through a patient portal and administrative tasks, is increasing and contributing to burnout. The goal of this study was to assess time allocated by primary care physicians within the EHR as indicated by EHR user-event log data, both during clinic hours (defined as 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday through Friday) and outside clinic hours., Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 142 family medicine physicians in a single system in southern Wisconsin. All Epic (Epic Systems Corporation) EHR interactions were captured from "event logging" records over a 3-year period for both direct patient care and non-face-to-face activities, and were validated by direct observation. EHR events were assigned to 1 of 15 EHR task categories and allocated to either during or after clinic hours., Results: Clinicians spent 355 minutes (5.9 hours) of an 11.4-hour workday in the EHR per weekday per 1.0 clinical full-time equivalent: 269 minutes (4.5 hours) during clinic hours and 86 minutes (1.4 hours) after clinic hours. Clerical and administrative tasks including documentation, order entry, billing and coding, and system security accounted for nearly one-half of the total EHR time (157 minutes, 44.2%). Inbox management accounted for another 85 minutes (23.7%)., Conclusions: Primary care physicians spend more than one-half of their workday, nearly 6 hours, interacting with the EHR during and after clinic hours. EHR event logs can identify areas of EHR-related work that could be delegated, thus reducing workload, improving professional satisfaction, and decreasing burnout. Direct time-motion observations validated EHR-event log data as a reliable source of information regarding clinician time allocation., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest: authors report none., (© 2017 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.)

Objective: To examine the use of computers in primary care practices., Design: The international Quality and Cost of Primary Care study was conducted in Canada in 2013 and 2014 using a descriptive cross-sectional survey method to collect data from practices across Canada. Participating practices filled out several surveys, one of them being the Family Physician Survey, from which this study collected its data., Setting: All 10 Canadian provinces., Participants: A total of 788 family physicians., Main Outcome Measures: A computer use scale measured the extent to which family physicians integrated computers into their practices, with higher scores indicating a greater integration of computer use in practice. Analyses included t tests and 2 tests comparing new and traditional models of primary care on measures of computer use and electronic health record (EHR) use, as well as descriptive statistics., Results: Nearly all (97.5%) physicians reported using a computer in their practices, with moderately high computer use scale scores (mean [SD] score of 5.97 [2.96] out of 9), and many (65.7%) reported using EHRs. Physicians with practices operating under new models of primary care reported incorporating computers into their practices to a greater extent (mean [SD] score of 6.55 [2.64]) than physicians operating under traditional models did (mean [SD] score of 5.33 [3.15]; t 726.60 = 5.84; P < .001; Cohen d = 0.42, 95% CI 0.808 to 1.627) and were more likely to report using EHRs (73.8% vs 56.7%; [Formula: see text]; P < .001; odds ratio = 2.15). Overall, there was a statistically significant variability in computer use across provinces., Conclusion: Most family physicians in Canada have incorporated computers into their practices for administrative and scholarly activities; however, EHRs have not been adopted consistently across the country. Physicians with practices operating under the new, more collaborative models of primary care use computers more comprehensively and are more likely to use EHRs than those in practices operating under traditional models of primary care., (Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.)

Background: Although alert fatigue is blamed for high override rates in contemporary clinical decision support systems, the concept of alert fatigue is poorly defined. We tested hypotheses arising from two possible alert fatigue mechanisms: (A) cognitive overload associated with amount of work, complexity of work, and effort distinguishing informative from uninformative alerts, and (B) desensitization from repeated exposure to the same alert over time., Methods: Retrospective cohort study using electronic health record data (both drug alerts and clinical practice reminders) from January 2010 through June 2013 from 112 ambulatory primary care clinicians. The cognitive overload hypotheses were that alert acceptance would be lower with higher workload (number of encounters, number of patients), higher work complexity (patient comorbidity, alerts per encounter), and more alerts low in informational value (repeated alerts for the same patient in the same year). The desensitization hypothesis was that, for newly deployed alerts, acceptance rates would decline after an initial peak., Results: On average, one-quarter of drug alerts received by a primary care clinician, and one-third of clinical reminders, were repeats for the same patient within the same year. Alert acceptance was associated with work complexity and repeated alerts, but not with the amount of work. Likelihood of reminder acceptance dropped by 30% for each additional reminder received per encounter, and by 10% for each five percentage point increase in proportion of repeated reminders. The newly deployed reminders did not show a pattern of declining response rates over time, which would have been consistent with desensitization. Interestingly, nurse practitioners were 4 times as likely to accept drug alerts as physicians., Conclusions: Clinicians became less likely to accept alerts as they received more of them, particularly more repeated alerts. There was no evidence of an effect of workload per se, or of desensitization over time for a newly deployed alert. Reducing within-patient repeats may be a promising target for reducing alert overrides and alert fatigue.

Time spent by physicians is a key resource in health care delivery. This study used data captured by the access time stamp functionality of an electronic health record (EHR) to examine physician work effort. This is a potentially powerful, yet unobtrusive, way to study physicians' use of time. We used data on physicians' time allocation patterns captured by over thirty-one million EHR transactions in the period 2011-14 recorded by 471 primary care physicians, who collectively worked on 765,129 patients' EHRs. Our results suggest that the physicians logged an average of 3.08 hours on office visits and 3.17 hours on desktop medicine each day. Desktop medicine consists of activities such as communicating with patients through a secure patient portal, responding to patients' online requests for prescription refills or medical advice, ordering tests, sending staff messages, and reviewing test results. Over time, log records from physicians showed a decline in the time allocated to face-to-face visits, accompanied by an increase in time allocated to desktop medicine. Staffing and scheduling in the physician's office, as well as provider payment models for primary care practice, should account for these desktop medicine efforts., (Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.)

Background: Eighty-four thousand primary care physicians have received $1.3 billion in HITECH payments for EHR adoption. However, little is known about how this will impact primary care workload efficiency and the national primary care shortage. This study examines whether EHR is associated with increases in face time with the patient per visit and increases in the physician's patient volume per week., Methods: We used a nationally representative sample of 37,962 patient visits to 1470 primary care physicians during the pre-HITECH years 2006-2009 from the restricted-access version of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Quantile regressions were used to estimate the effects of EHR use on patient face time per visit and physician's patient volume per week at different points of the time and volume distributions., Results: Primary care physicians with EHR spend an extra 1.3 face time minutes per visit, or 1.5 extra hours per week. This is 34,000 extra hours of face time per week in the U.S. However, physician age matters. Among young physicians, EHR use is associated with a decline in weekly patient volume, while EHR use among older physicians is associated with an increase in volume, regardless of initial practice size. If younger physicians behaved like older physicians when adopting EHR, there would be 37,600 additional patient visits per week in the U.S., the equivalent of adding 500 more primary care physicians to the U.S. workforce., Conclusion: EHR can enhance productivity/efficiency in primary care physician workloads.

Background and Objective: Probabilistic topic models provide an unsupervised method for analyzing unstructured text. These models discover semantically coherent combinations of words (topics) that could be integrated in a clinical automatic summarization system for primary care physicians performing chart review. However, the human interpretability of topics discovered from clinical reports is unknown. Our objective is to assess the coherence of topics and their ability to represent the contents of clinical reports from a primary care physician's point of view., Methods: Three latent Dirichlet allocation models (50 topics, 100 topics, and 150 topics) were fit to a large collection of clinical reports. Topics were manually evaluated by primary care physicians and graduate students. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Tests for Paired Samples were used to evaluate differences between different topic models, while differences in performance between students and primary care physicians (PCPs) were tested using Mann-Whitney U tests for each of the tasks., Results: While the 150-topic model produced the best log likelihood, participants were most accurate at identifying words that did not belong in topics learned by the 100-topic model, suggesting that 100 topics provides better relative granularity of discovered semantic themes for the data set used in this study. Models were comparable in their ability to represent the contents of documents. Primary care physicians significantly outperformed students in both tasks., Conclusion: This work establishes a baseline of interpretability for topic models trained with clinical reports, and provides insights on the appropriateness of using topic models for informatics applications. Our results indicate that PCPs find discovered topics more coherent and representative of clinical reports relative to students, warranting further research into their use for automatic summarization., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The authors assessed the ways in which primary care physicians (PCPs) utilize outpatient psychiatric documentation that has recently become accessible to non-psychiatric providers in the UC Davis Healthcare System electronic medical record (EMR)., Methods: The authors distributed a nine-question paper survey to 71 PCPs on the UC Davis Medical Center Campus in Sacramento, California. Questions addressed awareness of changes in accessibility of psychiatric documentation, which parts of the psychiatric note were most useful, and ways in which reviewing psychiatric notes changed providers' practice and perception of patients with mental illness., Results: Survey return rate was 100 % due to in-person distribution and collection of survey. More than half (58 %) of respondents were unaware that they had access to psychiatric notes. Within the psychiatric note, providers focused most on plan, diagnosis, and assessment components. Those who were aware reported improved understanding (97 %) and comfort with discussing mental illness (79 %), increased consideration of side effects of psychiatric medications (79 %), and improved efficiency in encounters with psychiatric patients (97 %). Responses about likelihood to contact psychiatrists directly varied considerably. About 45 % of respondents were more likely to consider psychosomatic etiology for patients who were also seen by outpatient psychiatry., Conclusions: Overall, PCPs reported that accessibility of outpatient psychiatric notes significantly enhanced their experience of caring for patients with mental illness. Future goals include increasing awareness and education about availability of psychiatric notes as well as optimizing communication between psychiatrists and PCPs. The authors recommend future studies focused on changes in perceptions among providers as a result of continued use of psychiatric documentation.

The federal government is investing approximately $30 billion in incentives for adoption and meaningful use (MU) of electronic health records (EHRs). Whether achieving MU improves quality of care is unclear. The researchers conducted a longitudinal study of 514 primary care physicians in New York State from 2010 to 2011. Quality of care provided by those who achieved stage 1 MU was compared with the quality provided by those who used EHRs but did not achieve stage 1 MU. Generalized estimating equations were used to determine whether receipt of MU incentives was independently associated with performance on 9 MU quality measures. In 2011, 44% of physicians achieved MU and 56% did not. No difference in quality was found between those who achieved stage 1 MU and those who were using EHRs but had not achieved MU. Longer follow-up is needed to observe the full effects of this multistage national policy., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Objective: The importance and potential value of office-based electronic health record (EHR) systems is being recognized internationally. We thus sought to better understand how EHRs are actually being used by family physicians and what they perceive to be the main performance outcomes for themselves and their medical practices., Methods: We conducted a survey of family physicians practicing in medical practices in Quebec, Canada (n =331). Bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses were conducted to characterize EHR usage behaviors and assess the perceived performance outcomes of these systems., Results: EHR systems "as-used" vary substantively from one family physician to another in terms of the capabilities that are actually mobilized by them. Significant differences between "basic" and "advanced" users were observed in terms of the EHR system's characteristics and perceived performance outcomes. Physicians were also clustered under three profiles that could be clearly distinguished from one another, in terms of the extent to which their performance and their practice's performance was impacted by their EHR usage. Physicians that are "highly impacted" by their EHR system are those who have the longest usage experience and make the most extended use of their system's capabilities., Conclusions: Our study indicates that only a minority of family physicians in our sample use most of the features available in their EHR system. Consequently, few physicians perceive gaining significant performance improvements from such systems. Future research must identify the factors that motivate primary care physicians to assimilate EHR systems in a more extensive manner., (Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.)

We used data from the mandatory statewide Rhode Island (RI) Health Information Technology (HIT) Survey to characterize office-based PCPs' adoption and use of EHRs from 2009-2014. We found accelerated adoption of EHRs in the five years since state and federal incentive programs began targeting PCPs' adoption of HIT. There was room for improvement, however; for example, when asked to indicate the proportion of patients with whom they used various functionalities, only 13.4% of office-based PCPs said they "almost always" communicated with patients using secure messaging and 22.3% "almost always" used secure clinical messaging with outside providers. Results suggest uneven use of EHR functionalities, with low rates and slower uptake in some areas. These findings highlight opportunities to increase use of functionalities related to improved patient care and quality-based payment models.

Background: In 2006 and 2009 the US-American Commonwealth Fund (CMWF) already conducted international surveys with primary care physicians regarding their daily work and important aspects of care. In 2012 a third survey took place in 11 countries, with an emphasis on use of information technology., Methods: There was a written survey and a telephone survey of primary care physicians conducted in eleven industrial countries. In Germany, a random sample of 4 500 primary care physicians out of all 16 federal states were contacted by mail between April and July 2012. The data acquisition in Germany was conducted by the BQS Institute for Quality and Patient Safety and funded by the Federal Ministry of Health. The results were weighted by age, sex, region and medical specialty of the participating doctors., Results: 9 776 primary care physicians participated; 909 of them in Germany. The response rate in Germany was 20%. 80% of the primary care physicians in Germany are using electronic patient records. But special IT functions, with the exception of electronic prescriptions and ordering of laboratory tests, are little used compared to other countries. Even in countries with a wide use of special IT functions within the practices, the possibility of communicating with colleagues and patients electronically is often lacking. 35% of the German primary care physicians think the quality of care has declined since the last survey in 2009. Only in France do more primary care physicians share that feeling (37%). In 2012 a lot more German primary care physicians stated to have problems with long waiting times for specialist consults (2009: 10%; 2012: 68%)., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Background: The federal government is investing approximately $20 billion in electronic health records (EHRs), in part to address escalating health care costs. However, empirical evidence that provider use of EHRs decreases health care costs is limited., Objective: To determine any association between EHRs and health care utilization., Methods: We conducted a cohort study (2008-2009) in the Hudson Valley, a multi-payer, multiprovider community in New York State. We included 328 primary care physicians in predominantly small practices (median practice size four primary care physicians), who were caring for 223,772 patients. Data from an independent practice association was used to determine adoption of EHRs. Claims data aggregated across five commercial health plans was used to characterize seven types of health care utilization: primary care visits, specialist visits, radiology tests, laboratory tests, emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and readmissions. We used negative binomial regression to determine associations between EHR adoption and each utilization outcome, adjusting for ten physician characteristics., Results: Approximately half (48%) of the physicians were using paper records and half (52%) were using EHRs. For every 100 patients seen by physicians using EHRs, there were 14 fewer specialist visits (adjusted p < 0.01) and 9 fewer radiology tests (adjusted p = 0.01). There were no significant differences in rates of primary care visits, laboratory tests, emergency department visits, hospitalizations or readmissions., Conclusions: Patients of primary care providers who used EHRs were less likely to have specialist visits and radiology tests than patients of primary care providers who did not use EHRs.

Rationale, Aims and Objectives: The goal of this study is to determine usability gaps between expert and novice primary care doctors when using an electronic health record (EHR)., Methods: Usability tests using video analyses with triangular method approach were conducted to analyse usability gaps between 10 novice and seven expert doctors. Doctors completed 19 tasks, using think-aloud strategy, based on an artificial but typical patient visit note. The usability session lasted approximately 20 minutes. The testing room consisted of the participant and the facilitator. Mixed methods approach including four sets of performance measures, system usability scale (SUS), and debriefing session with participants was used., Results: While most expert doctors completed tasks more efficiently, and provided a higher SUS score than novice doctors (novice 68, expert 70 out of 100 being perfect score), the result of 'percent task success rate' were comparable (74% for expert group, 78% for novice group, P = 0.98) on all 19 tasks., Conclusion: This study found a lack of expertise among doctors with more experience using the system demonstrating that although expert doctors have been using the system longer, their proficiency did not increase with EHR experience. These results may potentially improve the EHR training programme, which may increase doctors' performance when using an EHR. These results may also assist EHR vendors in improving the user interface, which may aid in reducing errors caused from poor usability of the system., (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Background: Studies of the effects of electronic health records (EHRs) have had mixed findings, which may be attributable to unmeasured confounders such as individual variability in use of EHR features., Objective: To capture physician-level variations in use of EHR features, associations with other predictors, and usage intensity over time., Methods: Retrospective cohort study of primary care providers eligible for meaningful use at a network of federally qualified health centers, using commercial EHR data from January 2010 through June 2013, a period during which the organization was preparing for and in the early stages of meaningful use., Results: Data were analyzed for 112 physicians and nurse practitioners, consisting of 430,803 encounters with 99,649 patients. EHR usage metrics were developed to capture how providers accessed and added to patient data (eg, problem list updates), used clinical decision support (eg, responses to alerts), communicated (eg, printing after-visit summaries), and used panel management options (eg, viewed panel reports). Provider-level variability was high: for example, the annual average proportion of encounters with problem lists updated ranged from 5% to 60% per provider. Some metrics were associated with provider, patient, or encounter characteristics. For example, problem list updates were more likely for new patients than established ones, and alert acceptance was negatively correlated with alert frequency., Conclusions: Providers using the same EHR developed personalized patterns of use of EHR features. We conclude that physician-level usage of EHR features may be a valuable additional predictor in research on the effects of EHRs on healthcare quality and costs., (Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.)

Objective: To describe trends in primary care physicians' use of health information technology (HIT) between 2009 and 2012, examine practice characteristics associated with greater HIT capacity in 2012, and explore factors such as delivery system and payment reforms that may affect adoption and functionality., Data: We used data from the 2012 and 2009 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Surveys of Primary Care Physicians. The data were collected in both years by postal mail between March and July among a nationally representative sample of primary care physicians in the United States., Study Design: We compared primary care physicians' HIT capacity in 2009 and 2012. We employed multivariable logistic regression to analyze whether participating in an integrated delivery system, sharing resources and support with other practices, and being eligible for financial incentives were associated with greater HIT capacity in 2012., Principal Findings: Primary care physicians' HIT capacity has significantly expanded since 2009, although solo practices continue to lag. Practices that are part of an integrated delivery system or share resources with other practices have higher rates of electronic medical record (EMR) adoption, multifunctional HIT, electronic information exchange, and electronic access for patients. Receiving or being eligible for financial incentives is associated with greater adoption of EMRs and information exchange., Conclusions: Federal efforts to increase adoption have coincided with a rapid increase in HIT capacity. Delivery system and payment reforms and federally funded extension programs could offer promising pathways for further diffusion., (© Health Research and Educational Trust.)

Accurate patient problem lists in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are valuable tools for improving the quality of care, communication among professionals, facilitating research, quality measurement and the implementation of clinical decision support systems. However, problem lists are frequently inaccurate and out-of-date, and use varies widely across providers. These deficiencies limit problem list benefits. We decided to check if accuracy of problem lists-assessed at a granular level of detail-registered in EHRs depended on the specialty of the physician (primary care providers vs. specialists), and in the event that such differences did occur, whether or not accuracy had also been affected by the work environment. By using registered problems and taking the generated clinical document, we designed a cross-sectional survey following the guidelines of the Clinical Document Architecture standard. Problems registered by primary care providers have a higher level of accuracy than those registered by specialists in all settings considered (emergency unit, inpatient and outpatient). The work environment also significantly affects the accuracy level of problems registered.

Background: Asynchronous electronic health record (EHR)-based alerts used to notify practitioners via an inbox-like format rather than through synchronous computer "pop-up" messages are understudied. Our objective was to create an asynchronous alert taxonomy and measure the impact of different alert types on practitioner workload., Methods: We quantified and categorized asynchronous alerts according to the information they conveyed and conducted a time-motion analysis to assess practitioner workload. We reviewed alert information transmitted to all 47 primary care practitioners (PCPs) at a large, tertiary care Veterans Affairs facility over 4 evenly spaced 28-day periods. An interdisciplinary team used content analysis to categorize alerts according to their conveyed information. We then created an alert taxonomy and used it to calculate the mean number of alerts of each type PCPs received each day. We conducted a time-motion study of 26 PCPs while they processed their alerts. We used these data to estimate the uninterrupted time practitioners spend processing alerts each day., Results: We extracted 295,792 asynchronously generated alerts and created a taxonomy of 33 alert types categorized under 6 major categories: Test Results, Referrals, Note-Based Communication, Order Status, Patient Status Changes, and Incomplete Task Reminders. PCPs received a mean of 56.4 alerts/day containing new information. Based on 749 observed alert processing episodes, practitioners spent an estimated average of 49 minutes/day processing their alerts., Conclusions: PCPs receive a large number of EHR-based asynchronous alerts daily and spend significant time processing them. The utility of transmitting large quantities and varieties of alerts to PCPs warrants further investigation., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

The Primary Care Information Project is a New York City initiative aimed at improving population health through the improved delivery of preventive care. It has assisted with the adoption of a fully functional electronic health record (EHR) in over 300 primary care practices. Practices with EHRs automatically transmit summary data that can be used to track population health indicators for recommended preventive care. Early analysis, focusing on small practices with fewer than 10 providers serving Medicaid and uninsured populations, showed increases in the delivery of recommended services of 0.1-2.4% per month (p ≤ 0.05). However, measurement of preventive care across this population is limited by some inconsistency of data transmission. This study shows that EHRs can be used to track the delivery of recommended preventive care across small primary care practices serving lower income communities in which few data are generally available for assessing population health.

Purpose: This study evaluated the magnitude of underreporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and investigated possible reporting patterns according to patient characteristics and the type of reaction based on the integration of information obtained from primary care electronic medical records (EMRs) and the Spanish Pharmacovigilance System., Methods: This investigation was a descriptive retrospective study analysing ADRs recorded in 2005 in the EMRs from six health centers in Zaragoza (Aragon, Spain) with a covered population of 126,838 subjects. The associations between the probability of reporting and the reaction and drug type were studied using logistic regression models adjusted by age and sex., Results: The total number of ADRs recorded in the EMRs was 543, of which 65.7% were reported to the Spanish Pharmacovigilance System. Positive associations were found between the probability of reporting an ADR and advanced age of patients (OR for ≥76 years = 2.0; 95%CI 1.1-3.6), involvement of the reproductive system (OR = 7.9; 95%CI 1.02-60.2) and involvement of psychiatric disorders (OR = 4.0; 95%CI 1.4-11.6). Negative associations were found between reporting an ADR and early age of patients (OR for 0-14 years = 0.2; 95%CI 0.1-0.6) and the use of antimicrobial drugs (OR = 0.6; 95%CI 0.4-0.9)., Conclusions: This study tackles an important public health problem directly related to patients' safety and highlights the utility of EMRs for investigating the current significance of ADR underreporting. It also makes us think that primary care physicians seem to have selective reporting patterns based on their familiarity with the reaction type and the drug causing the reaction as well as on the age of patients., (Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Objectives: Adding clinical decision support (CDS) to electronic health records (EHRs) is required under meaningful use legislation, but there has been little national data on effectiveness in improving clinical outcomes. We sought to determine whether EHRs with CDS improved blood pressure control in US primary care visits., Study Design: We used a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey., Methods: We examined adult visits to primary care physicians using the 2007 and 2008 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS)., Results: We found that patients had a mean age of 52 years, 34% were male, 15% had diabetes, and 70% were white. Rates of blood pressure control were significantly higher in visits where both an EHR and CDS (79%) were used, compared with visits where physicians used neither tool (74%; P = .004). Blood pressure control rates remained higher after adjusting for potential confounders. In unadjusted analyses, mean systolic blood pressure was 2 mm Hg lower in visits with the use of both an EHR and CDS, compared with visits where physicians used neither tool (P = .03), and this difference remained significant after adjustment., Conclusions: The NAMCS shows that physician use of an EHR with CDS is associated with improved blood pressure control. These findings are important because small improvements in blood pressure control are associated with reductions in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.