When Electronic Health Records Are Hard to Use, Patient Safety May be at Risk

New research suggests that hospital electronic health records (EHRs) that are difficult to use are also less likely to catch medical errors that could harm patients.

As clinicians navigate EHR systems, alerts, reminders, and clinical guidelines pop up to steer decision making. Yet a common complaint is that these notifications are distracting rather than helpful. These frustrations could signal that built-in safety mechanisms similarly suffer from suboptimal design, suggests the new study. Researchers found that EHR systems rated as being difficult to operate did not perform well in safety tests.

“Poor usability of EHRs is the number one complaint of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and most health care professionals,” says David Classen, M.D., the study’s corresponding author...