EHR Dissatisfaction: A Tech Or People Problem?

A percolating problem is beginning to boil over: doctors and nurses really don’t like their new electronic health records systems. And, as EHR implementations increase ahead of government deadlines for incentive dollars, dissatisfaction among clinicians is growing.

The problem might be that EHR implementation is treated as a purely technological issue when in reality it is a workforce issue. Several years before federal incentives began for healthcare providers to adopt EHRs, leading healthcare informatics organizations strongly recommended that workforce training and readiness must be a top priority in the national transformation from paper to electronic health records.

While the benefits of EHRs to patient care have been established, persistent user issues may be impacting the technology’s effectiveness. Many surveys and studies show that user satisfaction with EHRs is headed in the wrong direction. [...]