Optimizing Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for Better Workflows & Improved Patient Care
Written by: Katie Wilson, Veradigm, and Cheryl Reifsnyder, PhD
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are a cornerstone of effective patient care. Designed to streamline patient data management and facilitate communication between healthcare providers, EHRs enable clinicians to gain timely access to relevant patient information, leading to more informed and better-coordinated patient care.
EHRs can help improve workflows, reduce administrative burden, and enhance patient outcomes—but simply adopting an EHR doesn’t guarantee these benefits. EHRs require ongoing optimization to achieve peak performance. Considering that most clinicians spend nearly 6 hours a day on their EHRs, optimization becomes even more crucial.
Optimization is the process of utilizing real-time feedback and data analysis to enhance an EHR’s functionality. Failure to optimize the EHR to meet your specific practice needs means providers will underutilize the system’s potential, resulting in reduced user productivity and satisfaction. Poor optimization can result in poor usability, contributing to errors and user fatigue, and decreasing patient safety. Research also shows a connection between EHR-related inefficiencies and physician dissatisfaction and burnout.
Optimization can mitigate these risks. By streamlining provider workflows, reducing data entry time requirements, and making other adjustments, optimization can help physicians utilize the EHR more effectively. This, in turn, leads to better outcomes for both providers and patients.
Common EHR challenges
The process of EHR optimization is not always straightforward. Here are some of the common challenges your practice may encounter.
Workflow disruption
Strategic planning is crucial for integrating the EHR without disrupting established clinical workflows. Clinicians often require significant time and training to learn and adapt to a new EHR system. Without sufficient time and preparation, clinicians end up with increased workloads and decreased efficiency, rather than the EHR’s promised benefits. This, in turn, can create resistance to the new technology.
By including clinicians in the planning, implementation, and optimization processes, you create opportunities to address concerns, overcome resistance, and better direct optimization efforts to suit clinician needs.
Usability
An EHR’s usability is directly related to clinician productivity and user fatigue.
Many EHRs lack a user-friendly interface and navigation, making them difficult to learn and use. EHRs with poor usability are likely to interfere with clinicians’ ability to access and input patient information. Instead of streamlining clinician workflows, the EHR can cause basic clinical tasks to take more time and effort.
EHRs that generate too many or irrelevant alerts and notifications also have decreased usability. Excessive alerts can lead to alert fatigue, which often causes clinicians to overlook critical patient information.
Crowded desktop problem
Many EHRs are supplemented with 6 to 20 clinical support tools in addition to, and external to, the primary EHR system. These EHR-external tools are generally more difficult to access and use, creating an issue known as the “crowded desktop problem.”
Despite whatever benefit those tools might offer, most physicians avoid their use. In a recent survey of U.S. clinicians, 77% reported that accessing and utilizing these types of third-party solutions contribute to fatigue and burnout. Most reported that they avoid the extra steps required to use these tools, potentially missing essential patient insights.
EHR optimization strategies
EHR optimization can help clinicians fully leverage the benefits of your EHR system. It can also help your organization make progress on broader goals, such as implementing value-based care and pursuing population-level health initiatives. However, optimization requires a multi-step process for evaluating how the system will be used.
1. Provide user training and support
The first, crucial step in EHR optimization is providing users with sufficient training and support. EHR systems can be complex; without proper training, users are prone to errors and inefficiencies. However, training and ongoing support give physicians opportunities to ask questions, test existing workflows, and explore unfamiliar system features—without the added pressure of waiting patients.
2. Customize & optimize workflows
Customizing and optimizing provider workflows can help reduce your providers’ documentation burden—one of the key ways to combat clinician burnout. As you tailor the system to fit your organization’s specific workflows, here are some key questions to consider:
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What are the system’s existing template options? Select those that best fit your clinicians’ needs and customize as needed.
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What is the first thing a clinician sees when opening the EHR? Ensure the interface remains straightforward and user-friendly, regardless of the template.
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How can you streamline data capture and clinical documentation? Documentation is an essential part of healthcare, but can often be slow and time-consuming. Simplifying the documentation process—for instance, by collecting key data fields in one location—can make it easier for providers to input accurate, comprehensive information without interrupting patient care.
Gathering and implementing user feedback during optimization can help you streamline workflows without overcomplicating the EHR with too many options or excessively complex workflows. Over-customization can create user confusion, decreasing rather than improving efficiency. Balance is key.
3. Embrace time-saving technologies
EHRs may come with a wide range of time-saving options, such as configurable alerts or the ability to automate certain workflows or reports. Some EHRs provide integrated speech recognition and voice-to-text features, which can significantly reduce the time required for documentation. Mobile accessibility features enable providers to access the EHR on their mobile devices, promoting flexibility and responsiveness in care delivery.
Learning the specific features offered and customizing them to meet your providers’ needs will allow you to gain the greatest benefit from the system.
4. Reduce system fragmentation
To prevent the “crowded desktop” problem, you will need to avoid using 3rd-party add-on software with your EHR. This means identifying which specific solutions your practice requires, so you can meet those software needs with technologies integrated directly with the EHR. Technologies to consider include:
- Scheduling
- Messaging
- E-prescribing
- Automated or configurable alerts
Consolidating technologies into a single platform will make EHR use much simpler and more efficient for your providers—and also help to reduce clinician burnout.
5. Track key metrics to measure success
Tracking key metrics such as workflow efficiency, data quality and accuracy, and patient outcomes can help you evaluate the success of your optimization efforts. User satisfaction (assessed via user surveys or interviews) is another key metric, as higher levels of clinician satisfaction consistently correlate with both improved system usability and improved patient outcomes.
Facilitating optimization: Start with the right EHR
For EHR optimization to be most successful, you need to start with the right EHR system. Selecting the right EHR system means first identifying your practice’s EHR requirements.
Minimum EHR features
At minimum, an EHR system should provide:
- A user-friendly interface: Poor EHR usability remains the primary complaint of most healthcare professionals
- Features to improve user efficiency: For example, an integrated ambient scribe function, mobile accessibility, and prepared templates
- Customization options aligned with your practice’s specialty: Many EHRs can’t meet specialty-specific requirements, resulting in impaired productivity and decreased patient and provider satisfaction
- Interoperability: EHRs today require integrated interface technology to enable seamless communications, data exchange, and care coordination
To avoid the “crowded desktop problem,” EHRs must also integrate any solutions your practice will require. These might include solutions for patient scheduling, electronic prescribing, analytics and reporting, practice management, revenue cycle management, or receiving care gap alerts from payers.
Minimum vendor offerings
When choosing an EHR, consider what services, training, and support the EHR vendor provides. Adequate user training and ongoing user support will help your clinicians optimally utilize the EHR’s features and resources. Also ask whether the vendor furnishes automatic updates, which will help your system stay aligned with changing rules and regulations as interoperability standards and reporting requirements continue to evolve.
Veradigm EHR
Veradigm’s EHR could be the “right EHR” for your practice.
The Veradigm EHR is an ambulatory EHR with a user-friendly interface, designed for physicians, by physicians. It was ranked #1 for Family Practice and Primary Care Practices for ease of navigation, telehealth integration, and exceptional client experience. It includes intelligent features that increase efficiency and help reduce workflow complexity, such as:
- One-click templates that save time and increase accuracy by instantly populating patient data from prior visits
- Smart lists that learn from previous orders to automatically suggest frequently used items
- Automated reporting to quickly and easily generate compliance reports
- Ambient scribe to automate your clinical notetaking by capturing conversations and converting into structured, EHR-integrated notes
- Mobile accessibility via a dedicated mobile app for access to the EHR when and where it’s needed
The Veradigm EHR includes integrated telehealth, configurable hierarchical conditional category (HCC) alerts, and integrated risk adjustment tools to help providers identify high-risk patients in need of interventions, thereby preventing complications and improving patient outcomes.
Multiple optional integrations can help your clinicians avoid “crowded desktop” issues, such as Veradigm Payer Insights, which consolidates and delivers care gap alerts from multiple payers; and Veradigm ePrescribe, an electronic prescribing solution available within the clinical workflow, with access to both Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances (EPCS) and Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) integrations. Customizable workflows and specialty-specific content enable you to configure software to suit the nuances of your practice.
Training in EHR use is a key factor in physicians’ satisfaction levels, which is why Veradigm has developed a program that combines structured training with workflow consultation, with content and delivery tailored to your practice’s goals for adoption and optimization.
Optimize practice workflows with Veradigm EHR
EHR optimization is crucial for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of your EHR system—and the most effective optimization starts with an EHR capable of meeting your practice’s unique needs. Contact us today to discover how the Veradigm EHR can help your practice reduce administrative burdens and improve patient care.