The rise in provider dissatisfaction with EHRs and the second-time buyer boom have been well-documented and much-discussed. However, when analysts look to understand the cause of this dissatisfaction, they identify only superficial reasons: lack of training, workflow issues, price, or poor customer support, to name just a few. They fail to look deeper and miss the underlying structural cause of physician frustration.
When they break down the reasons for the poor reception of today’s EHRs, analysts are missing a crucial point: doctors are dissatisfied with major EHRs because they are all built in the same flawed manner. Templates are the reason for the plummeting survey results and the rapidly increasing second-time buyer contingent. Templates overwhelmingly slow doctors down, create unnecessary and uncomfortable new workflows, expose doctors to the risks of sub-par documentation, and more – yet nearly ever major EHR uses them.
If the EHR industry is to address usability problems, it must look beyond the symptoms and find the underlying cause: the structure and nature of templates.