Telehealth, Hybrid Care adding to Physician's EHR Workload

A new study in JAMA Network Open from MedStar Health shows how the increased integration of virtual care models is exacerbating the electronic health record documentation burden for clinicians.While telehealth alone doesn't appear to add significantly to a primary care physician's workload, mixing modalities – telehealth and in-person hybrid care environments – led to a 6% increase in time spent with documentary and EHR work, new research shows.These were among the results of an April study by MedStar Health Research Institute and Georgetown University School of Medicine published in JAMA Network Open, which focused on how hybrid-care environments impact the administrative duties of PCPs.Days with both telehealth and in-person care correlated with increased EHR, documentation, and medical-record review time.However, hybrid care showed no impact on next-day documentation time, suggesting PCPs managed to integrate the additional workload.