title: Physician use of electronic medical records: issues and successes with direct data entry and physician productivity.
abstract: At Intermountain Health Care, we evaluated whether physicians in an ambulatory setting will voluntarily choose to enter data directly into an electronic health record (EHR). In this paper we describe the benefits of an EHR, as they exist in the current IHC application and the ways in which we have sought to minimize obstacles to physician data entry. Currently, of 472 IHC employed physicians, 321 (68%) routinely enter some data directly into the EHR without coercion. Twenty-five percent (80/321) of the physicians use voice recognition for some data entry. Twelve of our 95 ambulatory clinics have voluntarily adopted measures to eliminate paper charts. Of the 212 physicians who entered data in 2004, sixty-nine physicians (22%) increased their level of data entry, while 12 (6%) decreased. We conclude that physicians will voluntarily adopt an EHR system, and will continue and even increase use after implementation barriers are addressed.
authors.affiliation: Intermountain Health Care and the Dept of Medical informatics at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: Paul D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Clayton
authors.forename: Scott P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Naus
authors.forename: Watson A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Bowes
authors.forename: Tammy S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Madsen
authors.forename: Adam B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Wilcox
authors.forename: Garth
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Orsmond
authors.forename: Beatriz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.forename: Sidney N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Thornton
authors.forename: Spencer
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Craig A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Jacobsen
authors.forename: Marc R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Udall
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Rhodes
authors.forename: Brent E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Wallace
authors.forename: Wayne
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cannon
authors.forename: Jerry
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gardner
authors.forename: Stan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Huff
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Leckman
mesh_terms: D000555:Ambulatory Care Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D003200:Computer User Training; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010820:Physicians