8 SEPTEMBER - 2022IN MY OPINIONElectronic Health Records (EHRs) adoption has increased in the last decade. There were many improvements in healthcare with the introduction of EHRs, like decrease of errors and misinterpretations, with improved healthcare quality and patient safety with the implementation and enforcement of safety guidelines and with the application of effective alerts in some uses cases. However, physicians are challenged daily with the inability to access relevant information using interfaces that are not user-friendly, the lack of interoperability and access among systems, the lack of ongoing, contextual training that keeps many in healthcare from optimizing the use of available systems, too many hours spent documenting care, less face-to-face interactions with the patient and burnout.The growing data volumes and differences in terminology, language, abbreviations, and even spelling in clinical documents make it challenging for physicians to have a full picture of patients for clinical decision support. A recent study demonstrates that 36 percent of clinicians spend more than half of their day on administrative tasks in the EHR. And what's more, 72 percent of clinicians expect the time they spend on administrative tasks to increase over the next 12 months. Other study by American Medical Association (AMA), reveals that high volumes of data entry and poor usability are a main cause of physician burnout. It is imperative to eliminate some of the redundancy and focus on what is meaningful. If the physicians cognitive bandwidth is used up just trying to get situational awareness, like, "Who is this patient, what are their meds, what are their problems, what are their care gaps?" then physicians are not able to be the diagnostician and to generate trust with patients.Several emerging technologies are attempting to address the challenges of clinical documentation, optimization is an integral part of leveraging the technology to improve clinical workflow. Simply because a practice has adopted Reduce Documentation Burdens and Decrease Physician BurnoutBruno CamposBy Bruno Campos, Deputy Director of Information Systems and Technologies, Luz Saúde
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