Integrating Electronic Health Records into Clinical Workflow: An Application of Human Factors Modeling Methods to Ambulatory Care

Adoption of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in hospitals and outpatient clinics is accelerating. EHRs can support and revolutionize the way information is used to provide high-quality and safe patient care. At the same time, however, issues with workflow integration have contributed to slow rates of EHR adoption in some settings, including ambulatory outpatient care. Workflow is a set of tasks, grouped chronologically into processes, and the set of people or resources needed for those tasks that are necessary to accomplish a given goal. Workflow analysis is an integral part of the early stages of the User-Centered Design . . .