Even if docs may be at the keyboard during visits, they report having to spend hours more outside that time — at lunch, late at night — in order to finish notes and keep up with electronic paperwork (sending referrals, corresponding with patients, resolving coding issues). That’s right. EHRs didn’t take away paperwork; the systems just moved it online. And there’s a lot of it: 44 percent of the roughly six hours a physician spends on the EHR each day is focused on clerical and administrative tasks, like billing and coding, according to a 2017 Annals of Family Medicine study.

electronic health records...have been linked to physician burnout.

In our study, decreased documentation likely resulted from “mouse click fatigue” as residents had to access multiple dialog boxes. This phenomenon affected all residents regardless of the year in training... It is important to note that our observed mouse-clicking fatigue is very similar to alert fatigue, a phenomenon in which clinically insignificant reminders lead to a paradoxical increase in patient safety hazards.

...poor EHR usability has been found to be a contributor to physician dissatisfaction, and many have hypothesized a direct relationship between EHR usability and physician burnout.

Once fatigued, physicians spend more time and effort completing tasks for the next patient. Consequently, fatigued physicians may be at a higher risk of missing key patient information that is needed to make accurate assessments and care plans. Therefore, the 'carry-over' effect of EHR-related fatigue is directly associated with patient safety risks," said Saif Khairat, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.