Nurses are much more satisfied with their EHRs (electronic health records) than physicians, with some of the strongest satisfaction points related to patient care, according to a new report from KLAS Research.
KLAS’ Arch Collaborative includes a database of more than 70,000 U.S. clinicians and 28,000 nurses. The feedback in this latest report, “The Nurse EHR Experience,” found that nurses achieve significantly higher levels of EHR satisfaction than physicians.
Of the nurses surveyed to date, 62 percent reported are pleased with their EHR; 20 percent said they are frustrated; and 18 percent said they are indifferent. “Because nurses work so widely with the EHR and play such a significant role in care delivery, this report is aimed at understanding where there are opportunities for improvement in the nurse experience and what the nurse experience can teach other groups of clinicians about how to succeed with the EHR,” according to the researchers.
Overall, the net EHR experience score— a snapshot of the overall satisfaction that clinicians report with their EHR environment—for nurses was a 41.7 out of 100, compared to a 16 out of 100 for physicians, according to the KLAS data. The overall score for advanced practice providers (PAs or NPs) was 37.8, and for physician residents or fellows, it was a 31.4.
The report revealed that the trend of higher nurse EHR satisfaction exists across organization types as well, as the most satisfied nurses are those who work outside the U.S., followed closely by nurses who work in children’s hospitals. But regardless of facility type, nurses are more satisfied with the EHR than are physicians.
As part of KLAS’ EHR satisfaction survey, researchers posed 11 different statements about EHRs; nurses reported higher levels of agreement than providers for every one of the questions. These included statements about reliability, internal integration, patient safety, and functionality, to name a few.
That said, there is still much room for improvement, such as integration with outside organizations, according to the research. Less than half of surveyed nurses agree that their EHR’s current external integration capabilities meet their expectations. Additionally, only half agree to at least some extent that the EHR makes them as efficient as possible, and just over half agree that the EHR provides them with the analytics, quality measures, and reporting they need.
The responses to the 11 statement further illustrated differences between nurse and physician satisfaction. For example, while both providers and nurses rated their EHR’s analytics and efficiency poor, providers are much more dissatisfied in these areas than nurses, coming in 26 percentage points lower for analytics and 21 points lower for efficiency.
What’s more, when it comes to patient-specific questions, such as patient safety, nurses are more likely to agree that the EHR is helpful. This is actually an area where nurses have some of their highest agreement: 67 percent of nurses agree or strongly agree, while less than half of providers (47 percent) do. And, regarding the EHR’s ability to enable the delivery of patient-centered care, there is an 18-point difference between nurses and providers.
