Prioritizing Patient and Physician Experiences
The ever-expanding use of EHR is a result of their value as a healthcare tool. Data showed that the electronic exchange of information between patients and physicians improves diagnostics, reduces medical errors, enhances communication, and leads to more patient-centered care — and physicians want their patients to use the portal to maximize their healthcare.
“[The EHR] is good for patients,” said Dr. DeBiasi. “Sometimes, patients have access issues with healthcare, whether that’s not knowing what number to call or getting the right message to the right person at the right office. If [the portal] is good for them and helps them get access to care, we should embrace that and figure out a way to work it into our day-to-day schedules.”
But maximizing the patient experience shouldn’t come at the physicians’ expense. Dr. Rittenberg advocates a model that compensates physicians for the time spent in the EHR and prioritizes a team approach to rebalance the EHR workload to ensure that physicians aren’t devoting too much time to administrative tasks and can, instead, focus their time on clinical tasks.
“The way in which we provide healthcare has fundamentally shifted, and compensation models need to reflect that new reality,” Dr. Rittenberg added.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.