Experts underestimated EHRs’ impact on burnout after HITECH Act
Healthcare IT News February 19, 2021
With the benefit of hindsight, policy experts say the magnitude of the current burnout crisis was largely unforeseen when the law enabling the meaningful use program was passed in 2009.
A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that policy experts underestimated the impact of widespread electronic health record use on clinician burnout at the time of the HITECH Act’s passage in 2009.
The retrospective look examined the discussions at the AMIA’s 2009 Annual Health Policy Meeting, which focused on the unanticipated consequences that could occur with the large-scale, national implementation of health IT – especially EHRs – following the HITECH Act.
That policy meeting included many fellows from the American...