Nurses' dissatisfaction with EHRs at 'all-time high'

About 92 percent of nurses are dissatisfied with EHR systems, according to the Black Book EHR Loyalty survey, which polled nearly 14,000 registered nurses from 40 states.

Eighty-four percent of nurses cited issues with disruptions in productivity and workflow, while 85 percent of nurses pointed to struggles with continually flawed EHR systems. Also, 88 percent of those surveyed faulted financial administrators and CIOs for selecting low performance systems based on EHR pricing, government incentives and cutting corners at the expense of quality of care.

Also, nearly every nurse administrator (97 percent) in for-profit hospitals felt that the impact on nurses' workloads--including the efficient flow of direct patient care duties--were not adequately considered during the EHR selection process.

"Although the inpatient EHR replacement frenzy has calmed temporarily, the frustration from nursing EHR users has increased exponentially," said Doug Brown, managing partner of the survey firm Black Book Market Research, in a statement. "The Meaningful Use financial incentives for hospitals have many IT departments scurrying to implement these EHRs without consulting direct care nurses, according to the majority of those polled by Black Book."

In other findings, 90 percent of nurses said EHRs negatively impacted patient communication and 94 percent felt that EHRs did not improve communication with the care team.

"Add to that the unique software interfaces from medical equipment and the multiple EMRs of each individual physician's office, it's no surprise that hospital nurses are getting discouraged and seeking employment in less complex organizations," Brown said.