Physician attitudes on ease of use of EHR functionalities related to Meaningful Use

To assess physician attitudes on ease of use of electronic health record (EHR) functionalities related to "Meaningful Use" (MU) and whether perceived ease of use was associated with EHR characteristics, including meeting MU criteria, technical assistance from EHR vendors or regional extension centers, and the amount of clinical staff training.

A cross sectional analysis of the 2011 Physician Workflow study, nationally representative of US office-based physicians.

Cross-sectional data were used to examine physician attitudes on ease of use of 14 EHR functionalities related to MU, among physicians with any EHR system.

For 11 of the 14 EHR functions examined, physicians with EHRs that met MU criteria were significantly more likely than physicians that also utilized EHR systems to report that EHR functions were easy to use. For 8 of the functions examined, physicians receiving technical assistance from a vendor or regional extension center were significantly more likely to report that the EHR function was easy to use.

Our study of a nationally representative survey of office-based physicians found that physicians' adoption and perceived ease of use of EHR functionalities related to MU was generally high.