Objective:

To assess Electronic Medical Record (EMR) efficiency to plan targeted interventions to assist physicians with low efficiency measures. 

Background:

Time spent on EMR is a leading cause of physician burnout. Assessing and improving EMR efficiency can help physician wellness. 

Design/Methods:

Yale Medicine uses Epic and have 62 neurology faculty. We obtained efficiency measures such as proficiency and Provider Efficiency Profile (PEP) scores from the Epic Signal portal. Proficiency score measures provider’s usage of Epic features such as Smarttools and Quickactions while PEP score is based on the time spent in Epic to the expected time based on the clinical workload. Both scores go from 0 to 10 and higher scores indicate higher efficiency. We divided physicians into 4 quadrants; quadrant I with both scores > 5, quadrants 2 & 4 with one score > 5, quadrant 3 with both scores < 5. We compared quadrant 1 and 3 for gender and junior faculty status as assistant professor.    

Results:

The mean proficiency and PEP scores for 62 neurologists were 3.8 (range 0.1 to 8.1) and 5 (range 1.2 to 6.5) respectively. There were 10 physicians in quadrant 1 (16%), 35 in quadrants 2 & 4(57%) and 17 in quadrant 3 (27%) with low efficiency indicating a need for intervention. The mean proficiency and PEP scores in quadrant 1 (6, 5.8) were significantly higher than in quadrant 3 (2.4, 4.2) (P<0.001). In these 2 groups, there was no significant gender difference but quadrant 1 had higher proportion of junior faculty (80% vs 41%, P <0.05) than quadrant 3. 

Conclusions:

We report EMR efficiency measures of proficiency and PEP scores with wide ranges in 62 neurologists. Junior faculty had higher efficiency scores. This approach can help target those physicians who can benefit from extra training.