Why Patients, Not EHRs, Deserve our Undivided Attention

I am a physician married to a physician, and for years, our evenings consisted of putting the kids to bed, then sitting next to each other, laptops open, finishing our charting. If you are a physician, you likely know the drill. There is even a name for it: “pajama time” in the EHR, and it usually consumes two or more hours.

This scenario, which plays out in physicians’ homes all across the country, is not just robbing us of work-life balance, it is robbing our patients of the undivided attention they deserve. We cannot earn patients’ trust and respect if we are tethered to a computer in the exam room, navigating the EHR concurrent to a visit or otherwise in a hurry to finish so we can return to our office where data entry to the EHR awaits us.

We have become slaves to computer data entry for the sake of insurance billing and regulatory requirements

These administrative burdens have driven some of my colleagues