What is it about?
The purpose of this paper is to understand the time spent on various tasks during physician inpatient rounds and to examine the new electronic health records (EHRs) impact on time distribution. We found that electronic records did not improve efficiency. However, task times were redistributed. Physicians spent more time reviewing patient charts using time saved from miscellaneous work, e.g. searching and waiting for patient's records.
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Why is it important?
Unlike previous work, this study was conducted in a non-teaching hospital, providing a task-time comparison without any educational and team factor influence. The result serves as a benchmark for many community hospital managers seeking to address the same issue.
Perspectives
This is a rare opportunity to compare task-time data immediately before and after the implementation of a comprehensive EHR system. The result indicates that it might need more time to see if EHR improves overall efficiency. Nevertheless, an immediate benefit from the implementation is on the quality side, physicians spending more time reviewing patients' records.
Dr Chih-Yang Tsai
SUNY New Paltz
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hospital rounding – EHR's impact, International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, August 2014, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ijhcqa-07-2013-0090.
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