Inputting medical data into Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network's EHR systems consumes a significant portion of its nurses' working day, taking up half of their time, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Oct. 28.
Ashis Barad, MD, chief digital and information officer of Allegheny Health Network, told the publication that EHR documentation time has been contributing to nurses' frustration and job discontent.
"Why do we have our nursing staff doing data entry?" Dr. Barad told the publication. "There is a world where we give back almost 50% of their time."
In order to mitigate this, Allegheny has made improvements to its Epic EHR system through the automatic population of fields related to the routine patient assessments conducted by nurses.
This improvement has helped speed up the process for nurses when inputting information.