Defining the Problem: Flexible Workflows in the Electronic Health Record (EHR)

The Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) Clinician Experience Workgroup met with the HIMSS Physician Committee shortly after HIMSS 2021 to discuss areas of shared focus and create plans for collaboration over the next year. Our groups already agree on the quality, safety and efficiency-of-care benefits, to both providers and patients, that EHRs have brought. We also agree that there is more work to be done to improve and deepen the impact of these tools on care delivery, documentation and clinician satisfaction. The focus of our meeting was to decide where action was most urgently needed to raise the bar for EHRs. One topic that was of interest was the sense that EHRs lacked flexibility within clinical workflows. This series will provide a summary of our discussion, the areas of focus we agreed upon, as well as some of the promising solutions we discussed.