Chris Kelley MD, Wesley Lane, Tamara Chang MD schooling all of us on we thought we knew about improving wellness for EHR-using physicians and providers.
It turns out that there are 2 personae of physicians: Dr. Efficient and Dr. Thorough. You can give all the docs the same EHR skills, but only some will reduce their time charting. Others will expand their time to be as thorough as possible. This second persona is much less likely to benefit from EHR optimizations and even from Ambient notes. What?!?
Instead, many of us carry into our careers, the mindset of the medical student or resident who is expected to be graded on the quality of their note, instead of if it being “good enough” like a “B-“ grade to capture reasonably accurate information for direct patient care.
As a result, the documentation time, the pajama time, is all spent in an elusive chase of perfect documentation, as if that were a proxy for excellent patient care. Instead, it is a proxy for burnout, with no discernable difference in patient satisfaction, quality of care, or clinical outcomes.
Here is an example checklist of “top ten” things for Dr. Thorough to learn and do each day, with ample evidence of reduced burnout when implemented. This is a HUGE learning people. This talk should be mandatory viewing by all informaticists working in EHR optimization.
To the Multicare team, thanks for rocking our world.