All That Time That Cannot Be Billed
Douglas K. Rex, MD, MASGE, reviewing Ramrakhiani NS, et al. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2020 Jul 25.
Previous data found that primary care physicians and some specialists spend about an hour on electronic health records (EHRs) for each hour they are scheduled to see patients.
The current study evaluated gastroenterologists practicing in a multispecialty group in a community-based health care system in northern California. Electronic audits were collected from Epic for 23 gastroenterologists and 3 nonphysician providers over an 8-week period. The data encompassed 3465 office visits, 310 office-based procedures, and 3598 ambulatory surgery encounters for the doctors plus 733 office visits for the nonphysician providers. For the gastroenterologists, the average time spent weekly on EHRs was 41.3 hours, and the average scheduled time was 24.5 hours, with a ratio of EHR time to scheduled time of 1.78 and an estimated 45 to 50 minutes of additional EHR time for each hour that was scheduled.
For the nonphysician providers, the ratio of EHR time to scheduled time was similar at 1.8.
COMMENTA major challenge for modern physicians is the time created by various tasks on EHRs, many of which are difficult or impossible to capture as patient contact time for billing purposes. These data indicate that gastroenterologists face the same challenge.
Note to readers: At the time we reviewed this paper, its publisher noted that it was not in final form and that subsequent changes might be made.
CITATION(S)
Ramrakhiani NS, Morikawa C, Shetler K. Gastroenterology providers spend an additional 45-50 minutes on electronic health records per hour of scheduled time. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2020 Jul 25. (Epub ahead of print) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cgh.2020.07.051)
