Trends in Electronic Health Record Capabilities for Tracking Documentation Time

Abstract

To understand hospitals' access to and use of data from electronic health record (EHR) developers that quantify the amount of time clinicians spend documenting clinical care in EHRs. Descriptive analysis of 4 waves of a nationally representative survey of US nonfederal acute care hospitals from 2017 to 2019 and 2021 (N = 10,662 across years). We identified the share of hospitals that had access to EHR documentation time measures between 2017 and 2021 and how access varied by hospital and EHR characteristics. We then described how EHR data were used among hospitals with access and whether use varied by developer. The share of hospitals with access to EHR documentation time measures increased significantly each year between 2017 and 2021, when more than two-thirds of hospitals reported having access to these measures. Despite hospitals' increased access to measures that track EHR time, lower-resourced hospitals, nonteaching hospitals, and hospitals with non-market-leading EHR developers were less likely to report having access than their counterparts. In 2021, the 2 most common uses of EHR data were "identifying providers in need of training and support" and "identifying areas to improve clinical workflow." The share of hospitals indicating use of EHR data increased between 2019 and 2021 for all studied uses. A higher proportion of hospitals with access to EHR documentation time measures used them for more purposes over time, suggesting their increased value. Although hospitals' access to and use of EHR documentation measures increased significantly in the last 5 years, future research efforts should investigate whether the use of these measures translates into reduced burden for providers.