Measurement abounds. Indeed, many ambulatory care providers feel besieged by the financial, quality, and service metrics that pervade their professional lives. Relatively new to this landscape are measurements from the electronic health record (EHR), which include practice efficiency scores that create a window on the clinician's workflow. In this article, we propose a set of EHR-related metrics that provide further insight into the clinician experience.
The EHR, which was intended to improve patient care, has had the ironic and unintended consequence of impairing practice efficiency, largely because of poor design, a focus on regulatory reporting, and the burden placed on clinicians by data entry (1). These problems can be addressed with better designs, new technologies, and better use of other members of the clinical team, which would in turn improve provider satisfaction (2), particularly for front-line clinicians who are experiencing high levels of burnout.