Nearly half of physicians think EHRs have decreased quality of care, survey finds

By Jackie Drees for Becker’s Hospital Review

More physicians (44 percent) believe that EHRs have hurt quality of care in their workplace than the 40 percent who said the technology has improved it, according to a recent Medscape poll released May 1.

Medscape surveyed 273 U.S. clinicians — 207 physicians and 66 nurses and advanced practice registered nurses — for the poll.

Five survey insights:

1. While physician respondents saw more detriment in EHRs, more nurses and APRNs (42 percent) said the technology has improved quality of care compared to the 35 percent of respondents who said EHRs have decreased it.
2. Poll results also showed that few physicians and nurses were involved in the decision-making process of which EHR to implement in their workplace. Of physician participants, 66 percent said they had no input, 28 percent had input and 7 percent did not use an EHR.
   Of nurse and APRN participants, 80 percent said they had no input, 18 percent had input and 2 percent did not use an EHR.
3. Of the physician and nurse/APRN participants who had input in choosing their workplace’s EHR system, just 2 percent said the system they wanted was chosen.
4. Physician and nurse/APRN respondents attributed said the following EHR aspects similarly contributed to a decrease in care quality: added paperwork/charting, entering data during the patient encounter, lack of interoperability with other systems and system failures or problems.
5. When asked what changes they would like to see be made to the EHR, 44 percent of physician participants said to make the systems more intuitive or user-friendly and 30 percent said enhancing interoperability and record sharing.

Thirty-three percent of nurse and APRN participants said they would like to see increased interoperability and record sharing changes made to the EHR, followed by 30 percent of respondents who said they would like the systems to be more user-friendly.