Thanks to government initiatives, healthcare providers across the nation are implementing electronic health records. But despite the progress that’s been made in adoption, a recent report from Frost & Sullivan shows that providers still face multiple problems when it comes to usability of EHRs.
The report—“EHR Usability: CIOs Weigh in On What’s Needed to Improve Information Retrieval”—finds that as the market matures and the volume of EHR data proliferates, ensuring reliable information retrieval from EHRs at the point-of-care will become a priority for healthcare providers.
The online survey targeted healthcare Chief Information Officers (CIOs) working in mid-to-large sized community hospitals. Frequently highlighted customer pain points include:
- Slow and inaccurate information retrieval from EHRs as well as difficulty in finding and reviewing data, both of which result in productivity losses for clinician end-users as well as potential risks to patient safety.
- Inability to create targeted queries or easily access unstructured data such as clinician notes.
- Time-consuming data entry tasks.
U.S. regulatory authorities will take notice of the growing chorus of complaints about EHR usability, resulting in a push to devote more resources to solving this issue,” said Frost & Sullivan Connected Health Principal Analyst Nancy Fabozzi. “Further, the high levels of end-user frustration with usability present strong business opportunities for pioneering technology vendors.”
