The American Medical Association (AMA) has released a framework outlining eight ways that it believes electronic health records (EHRs) should be improved to enhance usability. In October 2013, the RAND Corporation released the results of a survey showing a general dissatisfaction with EHRs on the part of physicians, who complained that they are not simple enough to use. The goal of EHRs, says the AMA, should not be simply to replace paper, but to make record-keeping easier.

“Physician experiences documented by the AMA and RAND demonstrate that most electronic health record systems fail to support effective and efficient clinical work,” said AMA president-elect Steven J. Stack. “This has resulted in physicians feeling increasingly demoralized by technology that interferes with their ability to provide first-rate medical care to their patients.”

Both RAND’s study and a similar survey by the International Data Corporation showed that doctors find current EHRs cumbersome and time-consuming. The AMA laid out eight “usability priorities” for EHRs going forward:

• Enhance physicians’ ability to provide high-quality patient care
• Support team-based care
• Promote care coordination
• Offer product modularity and configurability
• Reduce cognitive workload
• Promote data liquidity
• Facilitate digital and mobile patient engagement
• Expedite user input into product design and post-implementation feedback.

The AMA recognizes the value of EHRs as essential for healthcare data management, but finds their current design impractical.

“Now is the time to recognize that requiring electronic health records to be all things to all people — regulators, payers, auditors and lawyers — diminishes the ability of the technology to perform the most critical function — helping physicians care for their patients,” concluded Stack. “Physicians believe it is a national imperative to reframe policy around the desired future capabilities of this technology and emphasize clinical care improvements as the primary focus.”