Barriers to Information Access in Electronic Health Records during Initial Patient Visits: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have been shown to markedly alter clinical workflows and are associated with lower professional satisfaction scores among providers post-implementation. In light of these issues, questions exist regarding what barriers currently exist in EHRs to adequately meet the workflow needs of providers. The objective of this study was to describe what physicians perceive to be the current barriers to information gathering and overall workflow when using electronic health records (EHRs) to evaluate new patients. A web-based national survey was distributed to practicing physicians in primary care, general internal medicine, medicine subspecialties, general surgery, surgery subspecialties, general pediatrics, and pediatrics subspecialties from June to September 2014. Prominent themes pertaining to information gathering and overall workflow in the EHR were identified from narrative survey responses using constant comparison and axial coding to arrive at a grounded theory. Narrative responses from 327 physicians were obtained and analyzed from a total of 1385 respondents (24%). Major identified themes included: 1) Physicians struggle with unintuitive workflows and negative time impact; 2) EHR documentation was excessive and often of poor clinical value; 3) Provider-provider communication is negatively impacted by EHR challenges; and 4) Frustration with EHRs led to mistrust of vendors and clinical administration responsible for building and selecting the EHR software. Barriers such as inefficient workflows, increased time demands, and inconsistent documentation practices exist in EHRs that prevent ideal information gathering when evaluating a new patient. Results from this study could provide insights into new EHR interface redesign and development, and into new physician EHR training opportunities.