Boston-based Atrius Health has installed widescreen monitors throughout its health system to improve physician satisfaction and slash the number of organization-wide EHR clicks by 50 million annually, according to a report by the American Medical Association.
The widescreen monitors allowed physicians to eliminate 23 clicks per encounter with the EHR. On a daily basis, Atrius Health physicians eliminated 1,500 clicks because of the bigger screens, which also allowed physicians to have multiple windows open at a single time.
When analyzing where Atrius Health physicians were spending their time, it was discovered that 20 percent of EHR time was spent sorting through messages in the in-basket. Atrius Health's information technology department worked to move around 40 percent of the volume (200,000 messages) into dashboards that were easily managed, the AMA reports.
By altering the inbox features, Atrius Health was able to eliminate 1.7 million clicks annually and physicians got back another 45 minutes in their days.
Other health systems have also adopted strategies and deployed different EHR tools to reduce physician burnout. Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners has printers in the exam rooms and has made more than 40 templates to be used for collaborative documentation between physicians and nurses.
New Haven, Conn.-based Yale Medicine has created a system that allows physicians to use identification badges to tap in and out of the system after they initially log in at the start of their shifts. This has saved physicians between six and 20 minutes a day.