More Tethered to the EHR: EHR Workload Trends Among Academic Primary Care Physicians, 2019-2023.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to evaluate recent trends in primary care physician (PCP) electronic health record (EHR) workload. METHODS: This longitudinal study observed the EHR use of 141 academic PCPs over 4 years (May 2019 to March 2023). Ambulatory full-time equivalency (aFTE), visit volume, and panel size were evaluated. Electronic health record time and inbox message volume were measured per 8 hours of scheduled clinic appointments. RESULTS: From the pre-COVID-19 pandemic year (May 2019 to February 2020) to the most recent study year (April 2022 to March 2023), the average time PCPs spent in the EHR per 8 hours of scheduled clinic appointments increased (+28.4 minutes, 7.8%), as did time in orders (+23.1 minutes, 58.9%), inbox (+14.0 minutes, 24.4%), chart review (+7.2 minutes, 13.0%), notes (+2.9 minutes, 2.3%), outside scheduled hours on days with scheduled appointments (+6.4 minutes, 8.2%), and on unscheduled days (+13.6 minutes, 19.9%). Primary care physicians received more patient medical advice requests (+5.4 messages, 55.5%) and prescription messages (+2.3, 19.5%) per 8 hours of scheduled clinic appointments, but fewer patient calls (-2.8, -10.5%) and results messages (-0.3, -2.7%). While total time in the EHR continued to increase in the final study year (+7.7 minutes, 2.0%), inbox time decreased slightly from the year prior (-2.2 minutes, -3.0%). Primary care physicians' average aFTE decreased 5.2% from 0.66 to 0.63 over 4 years. CONCLUSIONS: Primary care physicians' time in the EHR continues to grow. While PCPs' inbox time may be stabilizing, it is still substantially higher than pre-pandemic levels. It is imperative health systems develop strategies to change the EHR workload trajectory to minimize PCPs' occupational stress and mitigate unnecessary reductions in effective physician workforce resulting from the increased EHR burden.

Refining Vendor-Defined Measures to Accurately Quantify EHR Workload Outside Time Scheduled With Patients.

Accurately quantifying clinician time spent on electronic health record (EHR) activities outside the time scheduled with patients is critical for understanding occupational stress associated with ambulatory clinic environments. We make 3 recommendations regarding EHR workload measures that are intended to capture time working in the EHR outside time scheduled with patients, formally defined as work outside of work (WOW): (1) separate all time working in the EHR outside of time scheduled with patients from time working in the EHR during time scheduled with patients, (2) do not exclude any time before or after scheduled time with patients, and (3) encourage the EHR vendor and research communities to develop and standardize validated, vendor-agnostic methods for measuring active EHR use. Attributing all EHR work outside time scheduled with patients to WOW, regardless of when it occurs, will produce an objective and standardized measure better suited for use in efforts to reduce burnout, set policy, and facilitate research.

Primary Care Patients' and Staff's Perceptions of Self-Rooming as Alternative to Waiting Rooms.

PURPOSE: Most patients are escorted to exam rooms (escorted rooming) although patients directing themselves to their exam room (self-rooming) saves patient and staff time while increasing patient satisfaction. This study assesses patient and staff perceptions after pragmatic implementation of self-rooming. METHODS: In October-December 2020, we surveyed patients and staff in 25 primary care clinics after our institution expanded self-rooming from 4 specially built clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured surveys asked about rooming process used, rooming process preferred, and perceptions of self-rooming compared with escorted rooming. RESULTS: Most patients (n = 1,561) preferred self-rooming (86%), especially among patients aged <65 years and in family medicine clinics. Few patients felt less welcomed (10.6%), less cared about (6.8%), more isolated (15.6%), more lost/confused (7.6%), or more frustrated (3.2%) with self-rooming compared with escorted rooming. Early-adopter clinics that implemented self-rooming ≤2016 had even lower rates of patients feeling more isolated, lost/confused, or frustrated with self-rooming compared with escorted rooming.Over one-half of staff (n = 241; 180 clinical, 61 nonclinical) preferred self-rooming (59%) and thought most patients liked self-rooming (65.8%), especially among clinical staff and in early adopter clinics (≤2016). Few staff reported worse waiting times for patients (12.4%), medical assistants (MAs) (15.9%), and clinicians (16.4%) or worse crowding in waiting areas (1.7%) and hallways (10.1%). Unlike patient-reported confusion (7.6%), most staff thought self-rooming led to more patient confusion (63.8%), except in early-adopter clinics (44.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Self-rooming is a patient-centered innovation that is also acceptable to staff. We demonstrated that pragmatic implementation is feasible across primary care without expensive technology or specially designed buildings.

Tethered to the EHR: Primary Care Physician Workload Assessment Using EHR Event Log Data and Time-Motion Observations.

PURPOSE: Primary care physicians spend nearly 2 hours on electronic health record (EHR) tasks per hour of direct patient care. Demand for non-face-to-face care, such as communication through a patient portal and administrative tasks, is increasing and contributing to burnout. The goal of this study was to assess time allocated by primary care physicians within the EHR as indicated by EHR user-event log data, both during clinic hours (defined as 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday through Friday) and outside clinic hours. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 142 family medicine physicians in a single system in southern Wisconsin. All Epic (Epic Systems Corporation) EHR interactions were captured from "event logging" records over a 3-year period for both direct patient care and non-face-to-face activities, and were validated by direct observation. EHR events were assigned to 1 of 15 EHR task categories and allocated to either during or after clinic hours. RESULTS: Clinicians spent 355 minutes (5.9 hours) of an 11.4-hour workday in the EHR per weekday per 1.0 clinical full-time equivalent: 269 minutes (4.5 hours) during clinic hours and 86 minutes (1.4 hours) after clinic hours. Clerical and administrative tasks including documentation, order entry, billing and coding, and system security accounted for nearly one-half of the total EHR time (157 minutes, 44.2%). Inbox management accounted for another 85 minutes (23.7%). CONCLUSIONS: Primary care physicians spend more than one-half of their workday, nearly 6 hours, interacting with the EHR during and after clinic hours. EHR event logs can identify areas of EHR-related work that could be delegated, thus reducing workload, improving professional satisfaction, and decreasing burnout. Direct time-motion observations validated EHR-event log data as a reliable source of information regarding clinician time allocation.

Sparse modeling of spatial environmental variables associated with asthma.

Geographically distributed environmental factors influence the burden of diseases such as asthma. Our objective was to identify sparse environmental variables associated with asthma diagnosis gathered from a large electronic health record (EHR) dataset while controlling for spatial variation. An EHR dataset from the University of Wisconsin's Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Departments was obtained for 199,220 patients aged 5-50years over a three-year period. Each patient's home address was geocoded to one of 3456 geographic census block groups. Over one thousand block group variables were obtained from a commercial database. We developed a Sparse Spatial Environmental Analysis (SASEA). Using this method, the environmental variables were first dimensionally reduced with sparse principal component analysis. Logistic thin plate regression spline modeling was then used to identify block group variables associated with asthma from sparse principal components. The addresses of patients from the EHR dataset were distributed throughout the majority of Wisconsin's geography. Logistic thin plate regression spline modeling captured spatial variation of asthma. Four sparse principal components identified via model selection consisted of food at home, dog ownership, household size, and disposable income variables. In rural areas, dog ownership and renter occupied housing units from significant sparse principal components were associated with asthma. Our main contribution is the incorporation of sparsity in spatial modeling. SASEA sequentially added sparse principal components to Logistic thin plate regression spline modeling. This method allowed association of geographically distributed environmental factors with asthma using EHR and environmental datasets. SASEA can be applied to other diseases with environmental risk factors.

The Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in a Wisconsin Hmong Patient Population.

PURPOSE: Wisconsin's largest Asian population, the Hmong, may be at high risk for type 2 diabetes. However, there are few population-based studies investigating the prevalence of diabetes in this population. This study compared the prevalence of diabetes between Hmong and non-Hispanic white patients of the University of Wisconsin departments of family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine clinics. METHODS: The study utilized data from the University of Wisconsin Electronic Health Record Public Health Information Exchange (UW eHealth--PHINEX). The proportion of Hmong patients diagnosed with diabetes was compared with the prevalence of diabetes in non-Hispanic white patients. Multivariate logistic regression was used to control for the differences in age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and health insurance between the two populations. RESULTS: The total prevalence of diabetes in the Hmong patient population was 11.3% compared to 6.0% in the non-Hispanic white patient population (P < 0.001). The prevalence of diabetes in Hmong adult patients was 19.1% compared to 7.8% in white adult patients (P =< 0.001). Compared with non-Hispanic whites, the odds ratio (95% CI) for diabetes, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, and insurance was 3.3 (2.6-4.1) for Hmong patients. CONCLUSION: Despite being one of Wisconsin's newest immigrant populations, who came from an area of the world with low rates of diabetes, the adjusted relative odds of diabetes in this clinic sample of Hmong patients is 3.3 times higher than its non-Hispanic white counterpart. The results support previous findings of significantly increased diabetes risk in the Hmong of Wisconsin.

The theory and application of UW ehealth-PHINEX, a clinical electronic health record-public health information exchange.

BACKGROUND: Electronic health records (EHRs) hold the promise of improving clinical quality and population health while reducing health care costs. However, it is not clear how these goals can be achieved in practice. METHODS: Clinician-led teams developed EHR data extracts to support chronic disease use cases. EHRs were linked with community-level data to describe disease prevalence and health care quality at the patient, health care system, and community risk factor levels. Software was developed and statistical modeling included multivariate, mixed-model, longitudinal, data mining, and geographic information system (GIS)/spatial regression approaches. RESULTS: A HIPAA-compliant limited data set was created on 192,201 patients seen in University of Wisconsin Family Medicine clinics throughout Wisconsin in 2007-2009. It was linked to a commercially available database of approximately 6000 variables describing community-level risk factors at the census block group. Areas of increased asthma and diabetes prevalence have been mapped, identified, and compared to economic hardship. CONCLUSIONS: A comprehensive framework has been developed for clinical-public health data exchange to develop new evidence and apply it to clinical practice and health policy. EHR data at the neighborhood level can be used for future population studies and may enhance understanding of community-level patterns of illness and care.

Disparities in Use of Patient Portals Among Adults in Family Medicine.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined patient portal utilization by analyzing the pattern of time and feature use of patients, and thus to identify functionalities of portal use and patient characteristics that may inform future strategies to enhance communication and care coordination through online portals. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study of patients at 18 family medicine clinics over a 5-year period using access log records in the electronic health record database. Dimensionality reduction analysis was applied to group portal functionalities into 4 underlying feature domains: messaging, health information management, billing/insurance, and resource/education. Negative binomial regression analysis was used to evaluate how patient and practice characteristics affected the use of each feature domain. RESULTS: Patients with more chronic conditions, lab tests, or prescriptions generally showed greater patient portal usage. However, patients who were male, elderly, in minority groups, or living in rural areas persistently had lower portal usage. Individuals on public insurance were also less likely than those on commercial insurance to use patient portals, although Medicare patients showed greater portal usage on health information management features, and uninsured patients had greater usage on viewing resource/education features. Having Internet access only affected the use of messaging features. CONCLUSION: Efforts to enroll patients in online portals do not guarantee patients will use the portals to manage their health. When considering the use of patient portals for improving telehealth, clinicians need to be aware of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural challenges faced by their patients.

Reduction in Medication Refill Encounters Through Primary Care Redesign Workflow Changes.

With a goal of improving efficiency and reducing workload outside of visits, we sought to examine a primary care redesign process aimed at reducing refill requests made outside of office visits. Data on the number of refill encounters per panel member were collected at 17 clinics before, during, and after the implementation of a redesign process. There was an initial reduction in the number of medication refill encounters, and the rate of refill encounters continued to decline following implementation. Variation across clinic contexts suggests that redesign processes may need to be tailored for different settings to optimize effectiveness.

The effect of remote scribes on primary care physicians' wellness, EHR satisfaction, and EHR use.

BACKGROUND: Physician burnout is a major problem in the United States. Small studies suggest scribes can improve clinician satisfaction, but scribe programs have not been evaluated using separate control groups or structured measures of electronic health record (EHR) use. METHODS: We conducted a pre-post, non-randomized controlled evaluation of a remote scribe pilot program introduced in September 2019 in an academic primary care practice. Scribes were paired with physicians via an audio-only cellphone connection to hear and document in real-time. Physician wellness was measured with the 10-item Mini-Z and 16-item Professional Fulfillment Index. EHR use was measured using vendor-derived platforms that provide routine EHR-related data. RESULTS: 37 of 38 scribe users (97.4%) and 68 of 160 potential control physicians (42.5%) completed both pre and post intervention questionnaires. Compared with controls, scribe users had improvements in Mini-Z wellness metrics including Joyful Workplace (mean improvement 2.83, 95%CI 0.60, 5.06) and a single-item dichotomized burnout measure (OR 0.15, 95%CI 0.03, 0.71). There were significant reductions among scribe users compared to controls in total EHR time per 8 scheduled hours (-1.14 h, 95%CI -1.55, -0.72), and an increase in the percentage of orders with team contribution (10.4%, 95%CI 5.2, 15.6). These findings remained significant in adjusted analyses. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS: A remote scribe program was associated with improvements in physician wellness and reduced EHR use. Healthcare organizations can consider scribe programs to help improve wellness among their physician workforce.

Collaborative care implementation: lessons learned.

The authors drafted a "Shared Values of Collaborative Care" document with fundamental principles to make better group decisions in implementing collaborative care.

Does a Change in Physician Compensation Lead to Changes in Care Delivery in Family Medicine Clinics?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Many highly capitated systems still pay physicians based on relative value units (RVU), which may lead to excessive office visits. We reviewed electronic health records from the family medicine clinic panel members of 97 physicians and 42 residents to determine if a change from RVUs to panel-based compensation influenced care delivery as defined by the number of office visits and telephone contacts per panel member per month. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of the electronic health records of patients seen in 4 residency training clinics, 10 community clinics, and 4 regional clinics was conducted. We assessed face-to-face care delivery and telephone call volume for the clinics individually and for the clinics pooled by clinic type from 1 year before to at least 1 year after the change. RESULTS: Change in physician compensation was not found to have an effect on office visits or telephone calls per panel member per month when pooled by clinic categories. Some significant effects were seen in individual clinics without any clear patterns by clinic size or type. CONCLUSIONS: Change in physician compensation was not a key driver of care delivery in family medicine clinics. Understanding changes in care delivery may require looking at a broad array of system, physician, and patient factors.

Expansion and Evaluation of Pharmacist Services in Primary Care.

Challenges with primary care access and overextended providers present opportunities for pharmacists as patient care extenders for chronic disease management. The primary objective was to align primary care pharmacist services with organizational priorities and improve patient clinical outcomes. The secondary objective was to develop a technological strategy for service evaluation. An interdisciplinary workgroup developed primary care pharmacist services focused on improving performance measures and supporting the care team in alignment with ongoing population health initiatives. Pharmacist collaborative practice agreements (CPAs) were developed and implemented. An electronic dashboard was developed to capture service outcome measures. Blood pressure control to <140/90 mmHg was achieved in 74.15% of patients who engaged with primary care pharmacists versus 41.53% of eligible patients electing to follow usual care pathways. Appropriate statin use was higher in patients engaged with primary care pharmacists than in eligible patients electing to follow usual care pathways both for diabetes and ischemic vascular disease (12.4% and 2.2% higher, respectively). Seventeen of 54 possible process and outcome measures were identified and incorporated into an electronic dashboard. Primary care pharmacist services improve hypertension control and statin use. Service outcomes can be measured with discrete data from the electronic health record (EHR), and should align with organizational priorities.

Physician Burnout and Timing of Electronic Health Record Use.

Background: Rates of burnout among physicians have been high in recent years. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is implicated as a major cause of burnout. Objective: To determine the association between physician burnout and timing of EHR use in an academic internal medicine primary care practice. Methods: We conducted an observational cohort study using cross-sectional and retrospective data. Participants included primary care physicians in an academic outpatient general internal medicine practice. Burnout was measured with a single-item question via self-reported survey. EHR time was measured using retrospective automated data routinely captured within the institution's EHR. EHR time was separated into four categories: weekday workhours in-clinic time, weekday workhours out-of-clinic time, weekday afterhours time, and weekend/holiday afterhours time. Ordinal regression was used to determine the relationship between burnout and EHR time categories. Results: EHR use during in-clinic sessions was related to burnout in both bivariate (OR=1.04, 95% CI 1.01, 1.06; p=0.007) and adjusted (OR=1.07, 95% CI 1.03, 1.1; p=0.001) analyses. No significant relationships were found between burnout and afterhours EHR use. Conclusions: In this small single-institution study, physician burnout was associated with higher levels of in-clinic EHR use but not afterhours EHR use. Improved understanding of the variability of in-clinic EHR use, and the EHR tasks that are particularly burdensome to physicians, could help lead to interventions that better integrate EHR demands with clinical care and potentially reduce burnout. Further studies including more participants from diverse clinical settings are needed to further understand the relationship between burnout and afterhours EHR use.

Metrics for assessing physician activity using electronic health record log data.

Electronic health record (EHR) log data have shown promise in measuring physician time spent on clinical activities, contributing to deeper understanding and further optimization of the clinical environment. In this article, we propose 7 core measures of EHR use that reflect multiple dimensions of practice efficiency: total EHR time, work outside of work, time on documentation, time on prescriptions, inbox time, teamwork for orders, and an aspirational measure for the amount of undivided attention patients receive from their physicians during an encounter, undivided attention. We also illustrate sample use cases for these measures for multiple stakeholders. Finally, standardization of EHR log data measure specifications, as outlined here, will foster cross-study synthesis and comparative research.

Transforming a Family Medicine Residency Into a Community-Oriented Learning Environment.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Improvement in population health has become a key goal of health systems and payers in the United States. Because 80% of health outcomes are driven by social determinants of health beyond medical care and health care access, such improvements require attention to factors outside of the conventional areas of expertise for clinicians. Yet primary care physicians often graduate from training programs with few skills in population and community health. METHODS: In 2011, the University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine began transformative work to become a Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH). As part of this effort, educators in the department addressed deficiencies in its residency's community and population health curriculum by implementing curricular change and faculty development. A set of guiding principles, "Three Community Health Responsibilities for Family Doctors," was developed to provide background and structure to current and future work. RESULTS: An annual program evaluation survey was administered to faculty and residents between 2012 and 2016. Respondents reported a significant increase in their understanding of population and community health over the prior year in each year this was assessed (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Community and population health principles have become part of the fabric of the entire residency curriculum in the DFMCH. Faculty development was a key part of this work and will be integral to sustaining improvements.

Association of Primary Care Physicians' Ambulatory Full-time Equivalencies With Time in the Electronic Health Record.

This cross-sectional study examines whether primary care physicians (PCPs) in the clinic part-time have reduced electronic health record (EHR) time commensurate with their clinical hours.

Prevalence and Predictors of Unhealthy Weight Gain in Pregnancy.

IMPORTANCE: Weight gain during pregnancy affects obesity risk in offspring. OBJECTIVE: To assess weight gain among UW Health prenatal patients and to identify predictors of unhealthy gestational weight gain. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study of women delivering at UW Health during 2007-2012. Data are from the UW eHealth Public Health Information Exchange (PHINEX) project. The proportion of women with excess and insufficient (ie, unhealthy) gestational weight gain was computed based on 2009 Institute of Medicine guidelines. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify risk factors associated with excess and insufficient gestational weight gain. RESULTS: Gestational weight gain of 7,385 women was analyzed. Fewer than 30% of prenatal patients gained weight in accordance with Institute of Medicine guidelines. Over 50% of women gained excess weight and 20% gained insufficient weight during pregnancy. Pre-pregnancy weight and smoking status predicted excess weight gain. Maternal age, race/ethnicity, smoking status, and having Medicaid insurance predicted insufficient weight gain. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Unhealthy weight gain during pregnancy is the norm for Wisconsin women. Clinical and community interventions that promote healthy weight gain during pregnancy will not only improve the health of mothers, but also will reduce the risk of obesity in the next generation.

Panel workload assessment in US primary care: accounting for non-face-to-face panel management activities.

PURPOSE: An understanding of primary care provider (PCP) workload is an important consideration in establishing optimal PCP panel size. However, no widely acceptable measure of PCP workload exists that incorporates the effort involved with both non-face-to-face patient care activities and face-to-face encounters. Accounting for this gap is critical given the increase in non-face-to-face PCP activities that has accompanied electronic health records (EHRs) (eg, electronic messaging). Our goal was to provide a comprehensive assessment of perceived PCP workload, accounting for aspects of both face-to-face and non-face-to-face encounters. METHODS: Internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatric PCPs completed a self-administered survey about the perceived workload involved with face-to-face and non-face-to-face panel management activities as well as the perceived challenge associated with caring for patients with particular biomedical, demographic, and psychosocial characteristics (n = 185). Survey results were combined with EHR data at the individual patient and PCP service levels to assess PCP panel workload, accounting for face-to-face and non-face-to-face utilization. RESULTS: Of the multiple face-to-face and non-face-to-face activities associated with routine primary care, PCPs considered hospital admissions, obstetric care, hospital discharges, and new patient preventive health visits to be greater workload than non-face-to-face activities such as telephone calls, electronic communication, generating letters, and medication refills. Total workload within PCP panels at the individual patient level varied by overall health status, and the total workload of non-face-to-face panel management activities associated with routine primary care was greater than the total workload associated with face-to-face encounters regardless of health status. CONCLUSIONS: We used PCP survey results coupled with EHR data to assess PCP workload associated with both face-to-face as well as non-face-to-face panel management activities in primary care. The non-face-to-face workload was an important contributor to overall PCP workload for all patients regardless of overall health status. This is an important consideration for PCP workload assessment given the changing nature of primary care that requires more non-face-to-face effort, resulting in an overall increase in PCP workload.