Study: Providers approach the same EHR differently

It may be the same EHR system, but different providers and clinicians develop their own personalized pattern of using its features, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College, the Health IT Evaluation Collaborative and the Institute for Family Health—all in New York—conducted a retrospective cohort study of 112 physicians and nurse practitioners eligible for Meaningful Use within a network of federally qualified health centers. They examined data, including 430,803 encounters with 99,649 patients from January 2010 through June 2013, when the organizations were preparing for the early stage of Meaningful Use (MU).

The study found that healthcare providers developed their own personal ways of using EHR systems, and variation among them was high. Specifically they varied by how often they updated lists of patients’ problems; when they respond to clinical decision support alerts; whether they established if an appointment was with a new patient or an established one; and their approach to MU objective metrics.

Factors accounting for the variability included a provider’s level expertise of a system, their familiarity with a patient’s medical issues; and staff differences at the health centers.  

“Physician-level usage of EHR features may be a valuable additional predictor in research on the effects of EHRs on healthcare quality and costs,” concluded the authors.