Very excited to share the newest work from me, A Jay Holmgren & Dori Cross out today in JAMA Internal Medicine! We use nationwide EHR usage data from 18k ambulatory physicians to study what happens when doctors start co-authoring documentation with their teams! jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

1/ Welcome to Edition 216 of West’s #WellBeingWednesday! Today let’s look at a new paper JAMA Internal Medicine from Nate Apathy A Jay Holmgren on #EHR and better documentation support #wellbeing #medtwitter #meded jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

2/ This team has been doing some really important work on EHR burden among other technology-related healthcare delivery research. This study of a diverse group of nearly 20k ambulatory physicians examined approaches to reducing documentation burdens.

3/ Why does this matter? Because physicians spend far too much time in the EHR in general, and much of this is occupied by documentation needs. These burdens should be lessened in general, but they certainly don’t need to always be completed by physicians.

4/ Is this arrogant? I don’t think so, because don’t we want physicians spending more time doing what they are uniquely trained and skilled to do – moving patient care forward? If you disagree, this is a good time to exit this thread …

5/ There are several levels to this study but I’m going to focus on the overall story: with documentation support, 1⃣ total visit volume INCREASED 6.0% 2⃣ documentation time DECREASED 9.1% 3⃣ EHR time outside clinic hours DECREASED 5.1%

6/ In addition, notes got a bit longer but physician-contributed manual text actually decreased. The greatest benefits were seen among high-intensity documentation support adopters (21% DECREASE in time writing notes and 10% DECREASE in EHR time outside scheduled hours!)

7/ What’s next? First, I would hope note quality did not suffer, and perhaps would even improve. This is not reported but is certainly evaluable.

8/ Second, I would also expect job satisfaction and measures of work-related #wellbeing to improve but these metrics aren’t reported either. Maybe that’s coming in a partner manuscript?

9/ This intervention highlights that support for clinical tasks such as documentation can improve clerical burdens AND yield greater patient access by freeing physicians to do what they are most uniquely qualified to do in their clinical roles: care for patients -- a good thing!

10/ Next week I’ll introduce an adjustment to how these threads may function, based on evident changes in X platform engagement. Perhaps LinkedIn will help … linkedin.com/in/colin-west-… /fin

To come up with $$$ required to retroactively pay #NIL to past graduates, schools are now shrinking current athletic programs (even D-1 football, so it’s not just the “small” sports) — students always end up paying. This ugly but predictable story is going to blow up Rex Chapman🏇🏼

1/ Welcome to Edition 217 of West’s #WellBeingWednesday! Today my first crossposting on LinkedIn #wellbeing #medtwitter #MedEd linkedin.com/posts/colin-we…