If physicians are struggling with templated EHR exam notes now, their problems are bound to be exacerbated as EHRs layer more and more levels of complexity.
The problems associated with templated exam notes have been well documented. From the amount of time it takes to build the notes by entering every piece of data via pointing and clicking, to the sheer length of the output that makes it hard for physicians to find the information they need, to the challenges related to upcoding and cloning (factors that the government is actively investigating), templated notes have been tolerated as a necessary evil associated with EHRs. But there are better ways to capture, exchange, and analyze discrete clinical data with precision, and without adversely affecting physician productivity.
As government programs rapidly evolve, and the number of such programs increases, the need to capture and analyze data will change and grow—think: new stages of meaningful use, PQRS, and the impending switch to ICD-10. An interview with orthopaedic surgeon Scott W. Trenhaile, M.D. inAAOS Now illustrates the increasing template-related burdens associated with ICD-10, just as an example. “We’ve spent a considerable amount of time on templating and are adjusting our templates to address those issues. . . . We’re changing the EMR templates to ensure that ICD-10 issues are covered. Answering certain questions in certain ways opens other templates so we have the information needed for ICD-10 coding.”
Related: The Meaningful Use Train Is Simply Moving Too Fast
Just this past week, the number of anti-template commentaries published in the media has exploded.
- The problem was aptly described as “note bloat” in a recent presentation to attendees of CHIME’s CIO forum, where the problems associated with typical EHR documentation of a patient exam were lamented.
- A recent survey conducted by the American Medical Association and reported by the RAND Corporation cited the prominent concern among physicians that EHR technology “requires physicians to spend too much time performing clerical work and degrades the accuracy of medical records by encouraging template-generated notes.”
- Bill Cayley, Jr., M.D., a family-medicine physician, blogged, “With the increasing use of electronic medical records (EMRs) and their ever-so-helpful templates, smart sets, and forms for capturing information needed to support billing and guide protocols, I fear we are losing the narrative forest for the well-documented trees.” He goes on to say, “Far too often, doctors are being forced to re-gather the entire history with the patient themselves, because prior documentation fails to provide the nuance needed to understand what happened during the last visit.”
If physicians are struggling with templated notes now, their problems are bound to be exacerbated as EHRs layer more and more levels of complexity onto already bloated platforms to try to keep up with the government’s voracious appetite for data.
Physicians need nimble and flexible data platforms to support the data-capture needed to identify and reward quality of care while maintaining physician productivity. The metastasizing complexity of the templated exam note can only lead to its demise.
Evan Steele is the CEO of EHR company SRSsoft and EMR Straight Talk where he writes about his observations and opinions on the countless complexities that are challenging everyone in the health care industry where this was first posted.
