A team of researchers from U-M recently published a paper in the Journal of General Internal Medicine documenting electronic medical record time demands faced by general internists at Michigan Medicine. The findings build on other studies showing that primary care providers nationwide face the highest number of incoming tasks on electronic health records systems.
Lead author Laurence McMahon, chief of general medicine at U-M, notes that the burden has driven many primary care providers across the country to cut back their clinical schedule, just to make their work hours manageable. “Fully 70% of Michigan Medicine’s general medicine faculty now work ‘part-time’, because it is the only way they can manage the explosion in work – in essence they are taking a pay cut in order to deal with what has become a full-time body of work,” says McMahon.