Catalyzing Pediatric Electronic Health Record Usability and Safety Improvements.

Abstract

* Abbreviation: EHR — : electronic health record Nearly every office-based pediatrician now uses an electronic health record (EHR).1 There is now evidence that using EHRs can improve guideline adherence, reduce medication errors, and improve other measures of health care quality,2 but the rapid adoption of EHRs has also precipitated unintended and undesired consequences, including the poor usability of EHRs.3 Usability is the extent to which a technology can be used efficiently, effectively, and satisfactorily.4 Poor EHR usability results in clinician frustration, contributes to clinician burnout, and has direct patient safety consequences.5–7 To improve EHR usability, we need rigorous and robust measures of usability to identify specific problem areas, quantify the effect of improvement efforts, and facilitate product comparisons so that consumers can purchase products that meet their needs. In this issue of Pediatrics , Overhage and Johnson8 report on a large-scale analysis of Cerner Millennium EHR use in >20 million pediatric ambulatory encounters by almost 30 000 physicians. Their approach provides a broad assessment of the time spent on tasks in the EHR, and time on task is a usability measure commonly used to … Address correspondence to Raj Ratwani, PhD, National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, Medstar Health Research Institute, MedStar Health, 3007 Tilden St NW, Suite 6N, Washington, DC 20008. E-mail: raj.m.ratwani{at}medstar.net