WEDNESDAY, April 12, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Physicians spend roughly as many hours on computer work as they do meeting with patients, according to a study published in the April issue of Health Affairs.
Researchers focused on time stamps from electronic health records (EHRs) used by 471 primary care physicians at a community health care system between 2011 and 2014.
The doctors saw nearly 637,769 patients face-to-face at least once during the four-year study period. Time spent on EHRs rose during that time, while total minutes seeing patients declined. Overall, the researchers estimated that physicians devoted 3.08 hours a day to face-to-face office visits (average 15 minutes each) and 3.17 hours to desktop medicine. Much of the desktop medicine was patient-related, however. It included prescription refills, medical orders, sending messages to patients, and writing notes about patients in their files. These progress notes alone accounted for an average of two hours a day.
"There is growing evidence that excessive use of EHRs is negatively affecting physician well-being," lead author Ming Tai-Seale, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate director of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute in California, told HealthDay. "Physicians with burnout symptoms are more likely to reduce their clinic time or even leave practice."
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