Physician & Nurse Practitioner Use Of EHR Found To Have Significant Variations

Physicians and nurse practitioners vary widely in how they use electronic health record (EHR) systems, defined in terms of how often they update problem lists, respond to clinical decision alerts, print after-visit summaries, and review panel reports. The annual average proportion of encounters with problem lists updated ranged from 5% to 60% per professional.  Physicians and nurse practitioners updated patient problem lists in a median of 20% to 25% of encounters, mostly by adding new problems rather than dropping problems from the list. Problem list updates were more likely for new patients, updated in a median of 26.1 . . .