| Title |
Electronic Health Record Logs Indicate That Physicians Split Time Evenly Between Seeing Patients And Desktop Medicine
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Health Affairs, April 2017
|
| DOI | 10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0811 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Ming Tai-Seale, Cliff W Olson, Jinnan Li, Albert S Chan, Criss Morikawa, Meg Durbin, Wei Wang, Harold S Luft |
| Abstract |
Time spent by physicians is a key resource in health care delivery. This study used data captured by the access time stamp functionality of an electronic health record (EHR) to examine physician work effort. This is a potentially powerful, yet unobtrusive, way to study physicians' use of time. We used data on physicians' time allocation patterns captured by over thirty-one million EHR transactions in the period 2011-14 recorded by 471 primary care physicians, who collectively worked on 765,129 patients' EHRs. Our results suggest that the physicians logged an average of 3.08 hours on office visits and 3.17 hours on desktop medicine each day. Desktop medicine consists of activities such as communicating with patients through a secure patient portal, responding to patients' online requests for prescription refills or medical advice, ordering tests, sending staff messages, and reviewing test results. Over time, log records from physicians showed a decline in the time allocated to face-to-face visits, accompanied by an increase in time allocated to desktop medicine. Staffing and scheduling in the physician's office, as well as provider payment models for primary care practice, should account for these desktop medicine efforts. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 488 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 244 | 50% |
| Spain | 19 | 4% |
| United Kingdom | 16 | 3% |
| Canada | 15 | 3% |
| France | 13 | 3% |
| Netherlands | 5 | 1% |
| Australia | 5 | 1% |
| Switzerland | 5 | 1% |
| India | 4 | <1% |
| Other | 37 | 8% |
| Unknown | 125 | 26% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 293 | 60% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 97 | 20% |
| Scientists | 88 | 18% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 10 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 233 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 233 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 42 | 18% |
| Student > Master | 28 | 12% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 21 | 9% |
| Other | 17 | 7% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 15 | 6% |
| Other | 47 | 20% |
| Unknown | 63 | 27% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine and Dentistry | 80 | 34% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 17 | 7% |
| Social Sciences | 14 | 6% |
| Computer Science | 12 | 5% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 12 | 5% |
| Other | 24 | 10% |
| Unknown | 74 | 32% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 572. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 January 2024.
All research outputs
#41,670
of 25,621,213 outputs
Outputs from Health Affairs
#134
of 6,523 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#837
of 324,338 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Health Affairs
#9
of 95 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,621,213 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,523 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 69.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 324,338 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 95 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.