Healthcare providers using the same electronic health records develop personalized patterns of EHR use for different features, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Researchers retrospectively analyzed EHR usage for 430,803 EHR encounters by 112 clinicians to determine how they accessed and added patient data, used clinical decision support, communicated and used panel management options.
Results indicated a high level of user variability. For example, the average proportion of encounters with problem lists while accessing patient data was between 5 percent and 60 percent per provider.
Researchers suggest understanding the physician-level variability and EHR use patterns may help further research efforts focused on the effects of EHRs on healthcare quality and costs.
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