John Halamka, MD, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, said going from paper charts to fully digital ended up losing the hearts and minds of clinicians and nurses.
Dr. Halamka was chair of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Committee under former President Barack Obama. The group was responsible for making recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use of health information.
Dr. Halamka said that during that time he was charged with digitizing medicine, which led to a process that meant clinicians would have to type in 140 data elements for every patient visit into the EHR. Meaning in 11 minutes, clinicians were tasked to see the patient, enter in those 140 data elements and be empathetic.
"It's not possible," Dr. Halamka said in an Oct. 9 Google YouTube video.
Administrative burdens such as EHR documentation cost U.S. healthcare $1 trillion annually, with 57% of providers reporting that excessive EHR documentation is one of the contributing factors leading to burnout.