Keywords
electronic health records - documentation burden - Symposium - nurses - physicians
Background and Significance
Background and Significance
The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and a simultaneous increase
in regulatory demands have led to a national epidemic of documentation burden among
clinicians (e.g., physicians, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and
other health professionals). Documentation burden is the stress imposed by the excessive
work required to generate clinical records of health care-related interactions and
results from an imbalance between the usability and satisfaction of documentation
systems alongside the clinical and regulatory demands of entering and consuming health
record data.[1] Documentation burden manifests as increased documentation times and documentation-related
stress associated with clinician burnout,[2]
[3] increased medical errors,[4] and decreased professional satisfaction.[5] A rise in clinician burnout, both among nurses and physicians, is significantly
associated with negative effects on patient care.[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10] Perceptions of burden can arise when clinicians perceive required documentation
as being burdensome rather than meaningful to clinical care.[11]
Research has demonstrated that outpatient physicians spend an average of 16 minutes
and 14 seconds interacting with the EHR per patient encounter, with 11% of this time
spent after hours.[12]
[13] Likewise, nurses spend between 19 and 35% of their shift time documenting in the
EHR, up from 9% when previously documenting on paper.[14]
[15]
[16] Hospital nurses document one data point every 0.82 to 1.14 minutes on average.[17] A study in the United States(U.S.) revealed clinicians spend 75% more time on EHR
documentation than clinicians in other economically developed nations which—in some
instances—were independent of EHR vendor.[18] These observations illustrate the large amount of clinical time given to documentation
which has direct impact on workflow.[19]
[20]
Many strategies that have been proposed for reducing documentation burden have their
limitations in scope and potential impact. For example, solutions that delegate documentation
tasks from clinicians to other entities such as, scribes or voice recognition software
have developed into workarounds rather than lasting solutions.[21]
[22] Further, these strategies do not address the existing burden across clinicians in
the interdisciplinary team or tackle the source of the problem—increased documentation
demands and inadequate EHR usability.[23] To combat this, both the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information
Technology and the National Academy of Medicine have made reducing documentation burden
and its associated burnout among clinicians a top priority.[1]
[24] In 2020, this was actualized (in part) through the National Library of Medicine
(NLM) and American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) funding of the 25 by 5: Symposium to Reduce Documentation Burden on U.S. Clinicians by 75% by 2025 (Symposium).[25] The goal of the Symposium was to establish strategies and specific actions that
could reduce clinician documentation burden on U.S. clinicians to 25% of present levels
by 2025.
The specific goals of the Symposium were to: (1) organize a meeting to engage a diverse
group of key stakeholders and leaders focused on reducing documentation burden; (2)
assess the potential for burden reduction within categories of clinical documentation
burden; (3) establish ready for action short-term (<3 months) and medium-term (6 months)
reduction interventions in clinical documentation burden; and (4) generate approaches
for long-term (10 years) elimination of clinical documentation burden. The meeting
considered solutions while respecting the following ground rules for any recommendation:
(1) no shifting of work to others (e.g., from one clinician to another, etc.); (2)
no erosion of care standards (i.e., quality, safety, value, efficiency, access, etc.);
(3) leverage technology and existing data inputs where appropriate (e.g., reduce re-documentation
of items already captured during other intake processes); and (4) maximize clarity
of proposed rule changes to minimize misinterpretation by health systems and providers.
Objective
The goals of the Symposium were to provide a forum for nationally and internationally
renowned experts to discuss the reality of documentation burden and to propose interventions
in the form of an action list aimed at substantially reducing documentation burden
on clinicians.
Methods
Provider and Health System Survey
Prior to the Symposium, the team conducted a nationwide survey to evaluate clinicians'
perceptions of the influence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on documentation
policy changes, including practice recommendations that were first proposed by Sinsky
and Linzer.[26] Among the 193 participants who completed the survey, most of the clinicians experienced
telehealth expansion (80.3%) and preferred that it remain permanent. The findings
also indicated that the increased adoption of telehealth helped reduce documentation
burden for clinicians (e.g., changes to required evaluation and management coding
in support of billing). The majority of participants supported documentation reduction
strategies associated with improving EHR usability (e.g., eliminating alerts) and
redundant and/or excessive data entry requirements (e.g., device integration). However,
there was variability in the perception of charting by exception and documentation templates, which were described as both contributing to and reducing
burden. Further details of this study can be found in the published manuscript.[20]
Symposium Structure and Participants
A Steering Committee was assembled to organize the Symposium. Members originated from
Columbia University, Vanderbilt University, the American College of Medical Informatics,
and AMIA. As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved through 2020, the Committee chose to pivot
from holding a one-day in-person meeting to a multiday virtual meeting. Following
this change, the Steering Committee constructed a modular approach with weekly 2-hour
virtual sessions over 6 weeks. The Symposium included 33 presentations by stakeholders
representing health systems, academia, industry, governments, payers, professional
societies, and the international medical informatics community. Symposium attendees
also included representatives from academia, clinical settings, government, industry
(EHR vendors and start-up companies), patients, payers, and professional organizations.
Over 300 participants from approximately 140 organizations attended the Symposium
from January 15th through February 19th, 2021. Further details on best practices used
to organize the Symposium can be found at the Symposium's website.[25]
Symposium Events
The Symposium consisted of six weekly sessions as outlined in [Table 1]. The first four sessions included keynote speakers, exemplar panels, industry panels,
and moderated panel discussions. The final two sessions allowed participants to select
domain-focused breakout groups (using a survey for ranking the top three topics of
interest) to establish approaches for reducing clinical documentation burden.
Table 1
Symposium session topic by week
|
Session week
|
Session topic
|
|
Session 1
|
Introduction and current challenges related to what we document
|
|
Session 2
|
Current challenges related to how we document
|
|
Session 3
|
Exemplars and key successes
|
|
Session 4
|
Emerging and future innovations and solutions
|
|
Session 5
|
Reactor and prioritization session for actions
|
|
Session 6
|
Plenary panel on insights for actions
|
Specifically, the first session, entitled “Introduction & Current Challenges Related
to What We Document” included presentations related to the content and workflow of
clinician documentation. Panel topics included issues related to policy and reimbursement,
and clinical practice and documentation. The primary challenges identified were a
lack of standardized terminologies and datasets. This lack of standardization reinforces
documentation in silos and division among stakeholder groups on the key elements of
documentation. Additionally, the Symposium identified a need for parity among clinicians
to avoid shifting of documentation requirements to other clinicians, and the ability
to leverage existing technologies to reduce manual documentation.
The second session, “Current challenges Related to How We Document” discussed the
various levels of bias evident in the EHR from design to policy. The panels focused
on data entry challenges and alternative approaches for data entry (e.g., innovative
ways to engage patients and conceptualize patient-entered data); discussion of diversity,
equity, and inclusion in documentation focused on the impact of stigmatizing language,
power dynamics, health equity, and public health concerns. This session highlighted
the unconscious filtering process to which clinical documentation is subject—from
social, political, and institutional systems that drive health care delivery and access,
to biases in data collection and its secondary use. Further efforts are required to
ensure that bias captured in the data collection phase is not perpetuated and reinforced
through its (i.e., documentation) re-use as evidence driving policy and research.
The third session entitled, “Exemplars and Key Successes” identified eight exemplars
which exhibited tangible results. Panelists discussed lack of sharing and dissemination
of knowledge discoveries across providers and health systems as barriers for learning
opportunities and the spread of best practices. During the third session, international
panelists from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom were invited to speak. It was found
that other countries experience documentation burden and are focusing on decreasing
the “size” of EHR content and notes despite not having the same reimbursement and
regulatory constraints as providers in the (U.S.). The fourth session was titled “Emerging
and Future Innovations as Solutions.” The panels in this session focused on the job
of documentation in the future, a discussion by industry members on the solutions
coming out of industry, and the review of the COVID-19 survey.[20]
With the goal of eliciting collective stakeholder participation in developing consensus-based
action items rather than differences in opinions, the final two sessions of the Symposium
were organized as breakout groups. Over 100 participants selected breakout group topics
organized according to the 2020 American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA) Burden
of EHR documentation conceptual framework. This framework was developed in 2020 to
help conceptualize “burden” as it relates to documentation.[27] It was adapted for the Symposium to discuss the multifaceted domains that contribute
to documentation burden and consists of the following: Reimbursement, Regulatory,
Quality, Usability, Interoperability, and Self-imposed.[27] Each domain breakout group included 5 to 10 participants and was led by a domain
expert. Participants selected their breakout groups of interest using Qualtrics. Steering
Committee members made a concerted effort to achieve balanced representation (e.g.,
provider type, work setting, etc.) among participants in each breakout group. Discussion
points were captured as free-text using the online collaborative tool, Mural (an electronic
whiteboard system).[28] Mural was used to organize the content and interests of the participants from each
breakout group. Conversations were focused on the current problem related to the domain,
ideas for optimization, and action items for the assigned domain.
Generation of Action Items
Three Steering Committee Members (M.H., R.L., J.W.) reviewed the content generated
during the Symposium breakout sessions which were recorded on Mural pages. The Mural
outputs were organized based on ANIA's six domains of burden, which underpinned the
Symposium's work. As described previously, these six domains are Reimbursement, Regulatory,
Quality, Usability, Interoperability, and Self-imposed.[27] The three reviewers ensured that the Mural content was action-oriented and categorized
the action items as either short- (<3 months), medium- (6 months), or long-term (10
years). Using an iterative approach, the three reviewers (M.H., R.L., J.W.) conducted
thematic analysis on each of the action items. Any discrepancies results were discussed
among the three reviewers until consensus was reached. The final results yielded five
themes: accountability, evidence is critical, education and training, innovation of
technology, and other.
Among each theme, action items were further synthesized and prioritized into Calls to Action—each of which were assigned with a responsible stakeholder group: Providers and Health
Systems, Vendors, and Policy and Advocacy Groups. Member checking was performed among
who Steering Committee who served as facilitators during the Symposium's breakout
sessions to ascertain if the themes elicited were reflective of their experience.
The Steering Committee was consulted via weekly online meetings at each of the four
phases of analysis.
Results
Overall, we identified 82 action items, which were synthesized and prioritized into
Calls to Action among the three stakeholder groups: Providers and Health Systems, Vendors, and Policy
and Advocacy Groups. These Calls to Action were then categorized as either short-, medium-, or long-term goals. Examples of
specific Calls to Action are described in [Table 2]. Five themes emerged through group consensus: accountability, evidence is critical,
education and training, innovation of technology, and other miscellaneous goals (e.g.,
vendors will improve shared knowledge databases). The subsequent codes grounding each
theme are listed in [Table 3]. In collaboration, the Symposium's participants generated the following recommendations:
Table 2
Calls to actions by stakeholder
|
Calls to action for providers and health systems
|
|
Increase support of functions like real-time information retrieval, documentation,
and ordering in the EHR (short-term).
|
|
Establish guiding principles for adding documentation to EHRs and generating evidence
for reduced documentation (medium-term).
|
|
Develop a national roadshow and educate clinicians and clinicians in training on balancing
brevity and completeness in documentation (long-term).
|
|
Implement interdisciplinary notes to decrease redundant documentation (long-term).
|
|
Calls to action for health IT vendors
|
|
Create simplistic EHR views to see that new clinical data has been reviewed, then
bookmark for the user and document as reviewed by that user in the EHR (short-term).
|
|
Promote an ecosystem of interoperable systems to allow for complementary technology
(medium-term).
|
|
Package best training practices into toolkits to promote best practice EHR use and
plan recognition programs to publicize exemplars (medium-term).
|
|
Develop measurement tools to categorize documentation practices (long-term).
|
|
Implement user-personalized clinical decision support to drive specific workflows
(long-term).
|
|
Calls to action for policy and advocacy groups
|
|
Urge agencies to fund innovative research that captures all billing code information
without taking up clinicians' time (short-term).
|
|
Select the best of breed approaches to documentation and implement throughout the
health care system (medium-term).
|
|
Develop technology to reliably and accurately create reimbursement/payment data for
all care settings (long-term).
|
Abbreviations: EHR, electronic health record; IT, information technology.
Table 3
Thematic analysis breakout groups notes
|
Theme 1: Accountability
|
|
Implementing mechanisms to assure collaboration between systems and structures
|
|
Ensure roles are clear
|
|
Facilitate cohesive understanding of requirements among agencies and stakeholders
|
|
Theme 2: Evidence is critical
|
|
Evidence-based practice should inform changes
|
|
Generation of evidence and approaches that decrease burden
|
|
Clinician input matters most
|
|
Theme 3: Education and training
|
|
Develop and disseminate optimal documentation requirements that meet the standards
|
|
Train on brevity and clarity for new clinicians
|
|
Prioritize quality over quantity
|
|
Incentivize training
|
|
Theme 4: Innovation of technology
|
|
Integrate advanced technological features
|
|
Increase interoperability
|
|
Theme 5: Other
|
Recommendation 1: Policy and advocacy groups should establish federal common ground and incentives aimed
at documentation burden reduction. While there is existing innovative work focused on the reduction of clinician documentation
burden—to date, these efforts seem to be siloed in the domain in which they were developed.
The most significant standardized national advances were the result of the paring
back of documentation requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these related
changes were implemented only during the emergency phase and these efforts are no
longer being maintained despite ongoing constraints.
Recommendation 2: Providers and health systems should train on documentation brevity in addition to
completeness in documentation. It is essential that documentation requirements strike a balance between maintaining
quality and completeness that captures the patient's story while optimizing usability
and workflow for the clinicians entering the data. In particular, copy and paste can
be timesaving and ensure content is carried forward from a prior clinician input.
However, it can also lead to note bloat and inaccurate information being carried forward.
This dilemma highlights the need to identify generalizable and clear standardized
approaches.
Recommendation 3: Vendors should package the best EHR functions into tool kits (i.e., collection of
packages to inform and facilitate implementation
[29]
) to facilitate deployment and EHR optimizations. For example, EHRs should facilitate improved access to clinical data and reduce duplication
of effort across team members. Vendors can partner with clinical subject matter experts
to build personalized decision support for interdisciplinary team members using artificial
intelligence to drive user-specific workflows and recommendations. Involving clinicians
early on with the integration of technology into EHRs can help tailor innovations
to the clinician workflow. While there are financial implications, a recent report,
published by McKinsey & Company suggests that EHR optimizations when approached thoughtfully
can lead to positive return on investments.[30]
Recommendation 4: Providers and health systems should establish and adopt guiding
principles for documentation requirements and collaborate with clinical experts. Changes to practices should be evidence-based and nonessential elements should be
removed. Education and training for providers and health systems should target report-out
efforts at regional and national meetings on the importance of documentation burden
reduction and aim for interventions and presentations at all levels of trainees. Training
initiatives should optimize brevity while maintaining completeness from the earliest
stage of clinician training. Innovations in the provider and health system context
should optimize real-time information retrieval, ordering, and documentation. To achieve
this goal, it is important that dialogue with researchers in medical education is
championed to integrate guiding principles into practice.
Recommendation 5: Policy and advocacy groups (e.g., National Institute of Health, Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, etc.) should urge organizations to coordinate and fund research
that automates coding information from the EHR. This is a central recommendation to reduce clinician effort and time spent supporting
these codes. Payors should clarify and standardize rules to reduce duplication of
effort in meeting requirements and assume responsibility for coding validation. The
prior authorization process was identified as a recommended focus of optimization,
including call centers that can centralize and streamline these activities.
Recommendation 6: Vendors should play an integral role in promoting an ecosystem of
interoperable systems to ensure complementary technology across EHR products. Vendors can offer metrics to review and assess a clinician end-user's documentation
in terms of length, efficiency, and redundancy to enable real-time feedback and peer
benchmarking. Further recognition of clinician champions in programs that publicize
exemplars and incentivize the sharing of best practices can enhance the adoption of
documentation burden reduction strategies. Vendors could create simple visualizations
in their display of new clinical data to ease review and knowledge integration for
decision-making. This central recommendation would be enhanced by personalized clinical
decision support approaches to enhance user-specific workflows and care recommendations.
These stakeholder-specific recommendations build upon existing research in the area
of documentation burden reduction through assessment and interventions. While these
action items and recommendations were developed with a focus on the U.S. health care
system and its specific challenges, other countries aiming to reduce documentation
can use these recommendations as a blueprint.[31] These action items can be implemented and divided into short-, medium-, and long-term
goals that will make a meaningful impact on decreasing documentation burden and improving
clinician workplace wellness.
Discussion
This report summarizes the 25 by 5: Symposium to Reduce Documentation Burden on U.S. Clinicians by 75% by 2025, a 6-week virtual meeting held in early 2021 with the goal of establishing an action
plan for reducing clinical documentation burden to 25% of its current level within
5 years. The Symposium globally engaged over 300 participants through a plethora of
thematically driven conversations. During the Symposium, attendees and meeting facilitators
collectively brainstormed solutions to reduce clinical documentation burden which
promoted the development of technological advances, such as artificial intelligence
designed notes, that could be created in collaboration with clinicians and patients.
Other documentation-reduction suggestions included improving the standardization of
data elements which may promote multidisciplinary records where data are shared rather
than re-entered. This is consistent with recent efforts to standardized quality measure
data in post-acute care settings motivated by the IMPACT Act.[32] Additional exemplars describing future innovations that can be used to reduce documentation
burden can be found in the Symposium's Summary Report.[33]
A core theme that emerged across all Symposium sessions and its 82 action items was
that patient care delivery and clinician–patient communication should be the essential
goal of documentation. However, patient care can be obscured by reimbursement documentation
and regulatory rules as well as by usability and design issues.[19] The results of this Symposium support previous literature connecting increased documentation
requirements to burden being placed on clinicians.[2]
[34] Our actions items aim to provide tangible steps to refine documentations requirements
and have the potential to reduce burden on clinicians related to documentation workload.
The 82 Symposium action items are not exhaustive and were not designed or anticipated
to reduce each specific data entry by 75%; each action item is aimed at reducing the
aggregate amount of documentation burden for clinicians. As action items are implemented,
it is possible to envision some notes becoming longer compared with current documentation
outputs while other notes becoming completely automated or eliminated altogether.
The purpose of reducing clinical documentation burden is to achieve the maximal clinical
effectiveness of notes across the interdisciplinary team.
The Symposium and subsequent analyses mark an important step toward action. Our list
of recommendations is not conceived to be exhaustive nor was that our intention. The
consensus is to proceed with unified strategies to promptly make a significant impact
targeting feasible short-term goals, while continuing longer-term strategies that
build on existing innovations and emerging technologies. The Symposium developed interventions
in the form of a list of actionable, feasible, and broadly acceptable action items.
Continued success in this effort requires ongoing dissemination and engagement to
join the Call to Action to reduce documentation burden for clinicians.
Conclusion
The 25 by 5: Symposium to Reduce Documentation Burden on U.S. Clinicians by 75% by 2025 and dissemination activities will be a success if they result in changes that improve
the national trend of worsening clinician burnout that is, in part, related to EHR
documentation burden. The Symposium generated a list of interventions with action-oriented
items as a launching point for addressing documentation burden. However, the continued
success of these efforts is now dependent on stakeholders' response to the outlined
Calls to Action. Stakeholders are urged to consider how they can take an active role in addressing
the interventions to reduce the documentation burden placed on clinicians, which has
the potential to improve patient safety and care delivery.
Clinical Relevance Statement
Clinical Relevance Statement
Clinicians are faced with increasing documentation demands contributing to clinician
burnout which may lead to suboptimal patient care. The Symposium produced a list of
actionable interventions that can be adopted by stakeholders to reduce documentation
burden imposed on clinicians. It is imperative that documentation reduction strategies
like those proposed in the action list be implemented to help address the increasing
number of clinicians experiencing burnout, with direct implications for improving
patient care.
Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple Choice Questions
-
A way that documentation burden influences patient care is it:
-
Decreases the need for collaboration.
-
Increases the time spent at the bedside.
-
Increases medical errors.
-
Promotes patient satisfaction.
Correct Answer: Option c is the correct answer because it was found that increased documentation
burden on clinicians increases clinician burnout and decreases the time they can spend
at the bedside that can ultimately result in medication errors.
-
The Symposium's Calls to Actions to reduce documentation burden were aimed at…
-
Developing an exhaustive list of interventions to eliminate documentation for clinicians.
-
Holding a Symposium to decrease documentation for clinicians by 5% in 25 years.
-
Implementing interventions to reduce documentation burden for clinicians.
-
Providing a forum for experts to discuss documentation burden and propose interventions.
Correct Answer: Option d is the correct choice because the goal of the Symposium was not to develop
an exhaustive list of interventions that would eliminate documentation but rather
provide a comprehensive list of interventions to serve as a launching point to decrease
documentation burden on clinicians by 75% by 2025.