International journal of medical informatics
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The impact of the ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) on physician productivity is poorly understood. Fear of productivity loss remains a major concern for practitioners and health care delivery organizations and inhibits system adoption. This study describes the changes in physician productivity after the implementation of a commercially available ambulatory EHR system in a large academic multi-specialty physician group. ⋯ Provider productivity, as measured by patient visit volume, charges, and wRVUs modestly increased for a cohort of multi-specialty providers that adopted a commercially available ambulatory EHR. The productivity gain appeared to become even more pronounced after several months of system experience. This objective data may help persuade apprehensive practitioners that EHR adoption need not harm productivity. The baseline differences in productivity metrics for the adopters and non-adopters in our study suggest that there are fundamental differences in these groups. Further characterizing these differences may help predict EHR adoption success and guide future implementation strategies.
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While search engines have become nearly ubiquitous on the Web, electronic health records (EHRs) generally lack search functionality; furthermore, there is no knowledge on how and what healthcare providers search while using an EHR-based search utility. In this study, we sought to understand user needs as captured by their search queries. ⋯ A variety of user types, ranging from clinicians to administrative staff, took advantage of the EHR-based search utility. Though these users' search behavior differed, they predominantly performed informational searches related to laboratory results and specific diseases. Additionally, a number of queries were part of words, implying the need for a free-text module to be included in any future concept-based search algorithm.