High rates of physician burnout and depression may predate EHRs, but the imperfect technology hasn't helped, Michael Blum, MD, said during a panel discussion in San Francisco last week, according to Reuters.
Dr. Blum, chief medical information officer at UC San Francisco Medical Center, and three other physicians spoke on a panel discussion titled "Technology, Patients and the Art of Medicine." The panel discussion was sponsored by Medscape.
Although innovative technologies have helped inform and improve patient care in recent years, 69 percent of physicians in the audience said increased reliance on EHRs hindered patient care.
Abraham Verghese, MD, a Stanford (Calif.) University professor, said EHRs were successful in streamlining billing and reducing medical errors. However, he also credited EHRs with tethering physicians to their computers and partially contributing to higher rates of burnout, depression and suicide.
Dr. Blum highlighted physician burnout, depression and suicide predate the move toward EHRs. He added the government has arguably been encouraging physicians to treat their notes as billing tools for at least the past 10 years.
"Then you throw the electronic health record on top of that," Dr. Blum said, according to Reuters. "That just took a bad situation and made it horribly worse."