The evidence is indisputable: the fear of lost productivity associated with EHR implementation is uppermost in the minds of physicians, and their fears are justified by the actual experience of the majority of EHR adopters to date. The titles of two articles about the recently released MGMA EHR survey say it all: “Survey: EHRs Often Don’t Increase Doc Productivity” (Health Data Management) and “HITECH Drives Docs to EHRs, but Cost, Productivity Issues Remain” (Healthcare IT News).
MGMA is to be commended for the size and scope of this important survey (4,588 practices representing 120,000 physicians), for the multiple ways it segmented the survey population, and for the detailed analysis of the results. One important segmentation was missing, however—that of physician specialty, or, at a minimum, of primary care versus specialist. The EHR experience of orthopaedists or ophthalmologists, who may see as many as 60 patients a day, is dramatically different from that of a family practice physician who sees 20.
Productivity was the pervasive issue. The only group that reported some productivity gains was the 16.3% self-proclaimed “optimized users” of EHRs—those who have had sufficient time following implementation to master the EHR. (The report did not define “sufficient time.”) Among this group, 41% reported that physician productivity has increased. What is disturbing about this statistic, however, is the implication of the converse—that even among these most accomplished EHR users, the majority of physicians (59%) are seeing a decrease, or at best no increase, in productivity. For the total population studied, 43% have just worked their way back up to where they were before implementation, and 31% of respondents are experiencing an actual productivity decrease.
Productivity was the major factor accounting for why 8% of survey participants are in the process of replacing their EHR with another, while anticipated productivity loss was reported as the most significant barrier to EHR implementation for physicians still using paper charts. Among these paper users, 78% fear productivity loss during implementation and 67% worry about the effect even after the transition to an EHR.
This data confirms past experience regarding productivity loss and raises these critical questions:
- Why do only 16.3% of EHR owners categorize themselves as “optimizing their use of an EHR”?
- While government incentives will certainly address the financing concerns expressed by small practices, how will this money address the productivity obstacle for all adopters?
- What accounts for the loss of productivity?
- When technology has replaced an antiquated paper process in other industries, it has always brought increases in productivity. How do we deliver the same results in healthcare?
The MGMA report did not tie satisfaction and productivity to the particular EHR being used, but there were clearly some successes, so it is important to understand what differentiates these implementations. It all comes down to usability. According to a recent HIMSS Task Force Report on why adoption has been so slow, “A key reason, aside from initial costs and lost productivity during EMR implementation, is lack of efficiency and usability of EMRs currently available.” I maintain that lost productivity and lack of usability are one and the same.
