Impact of Electronic Health Record Implementation on Ophthalmology Trainee Time Expenditures.

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Medical Informatics
• Medical Education

Background:

• Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly prevalent in healthcare settings.
• The impact of EHR implementation on the time demands for ophthalmology trainees remains unclear.
• Understanding these time demands is crucial for effective training and preventing burnout.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the time ophthalmology trainees spent on clinical activities during the implementation of an EHR system.
• To compare time spent on documentation, examination, and patient interaction before and after EHR adoption.

Main Methods:

• A prospective time-motion study was conducted.
• Manual observations recorded trainee time during 156 patient encounters in an academic ophthalmology department.
• Data were collected 2 weeks before and 6 weeks after EHR implementation.

Main Results:

• Total time per patient encounter remained largely unchanged after EHR implementation (11.6 minutes on paper vs. 11.8 minutes with EHR).
• Absolute documentation time did not significantly differ, but its proportion of total encounter time increased from 48% to 57%.
• This increase in documentation proportion was statistically significant (p=0.011).

Conclusions:

• Early EHR adoption by ophthalmology trainees did not significantly alter overall patient encounter duration or absolute documentation time.
• A significant increase in the proportion of time dedicated to documentation was observed with EHR use.
• Further evaluation of EHR impact is needed to understand trainee learning curves and develop strategies to mitigate potential burnout.