Ease of use is always a consideration when evaluating a piece of technology. There’s a reason we see an uproar when, perceived or not, usability is threatened with even a small disruption like the removal of the headphone jack on iPhones. The iPhone, though, comes from a place of high usability, just like performing a search on Google could be considered very usable.
A group of researchers from Stanford, Mayo, and the American Medical Association found that people agree, doing a Google search received a 93% grade on their usability scale. This scale has been used across different industries in over 1,300 studies. Other common items that were studied slowly moved down the usability scale from microwaves to Microsoft Word, to GPSs and finally coming in with a score of 45% was the EHR.
(Source: YaleNews)
The EHR, which was developed to make healthcare information easier to manage, is taking up a huge chunk of physicians’ days, with one to two hours spent on EHRs and deskwork for each hour spent with patients.
While it’s not surprising, the study also confirmed that there is a high correlation between how usable physicians find their EHR and burnout. This is important because while levels of physician burnout have improved (from 54.4% in 2014 to 43.9% in 2017), they’re still at an elevated level when compared to the general population.
The struggle around the usability of EHRs can trickle down to patients as well in terms of the ease of getting information into the system in a timely fashion. A recent scorecard released by private company Ciitizen found that just over half of the providers they looked into weren’t HIPAA compliant regarding the right of access rule.
Where most providers struggled was in sending records in the patient-desired format. While other issues reported included inflated costs, the inability to request records through approved methods, and improper routing, many institutions struggled with delivering records in a timely fashion (with a 30-day window as the benchmark).
This is one of the areas we believe automation can make a difference. It’s difficult to be able to produce records in a timely fashion if information is still sitting in a stack of paper on a desk in the HIM department. Not only does our HealthyData platform drastically reduce or eliminate backlogs, it also allows for user-defined designations of priority patients. This allows providers to create criteria, perhaps in this case being patients who have an outstanding document request, that moves specific people’s documents to the top of the queue for automated entry.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Extract can help you get data into your EHR faster and prioritize your patients, please reach out today for a demo or discussion.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.