The American Medical Association (AMA) has awarded research grants totaling nearly $600,000 to nine healthcare organizations, including Brigham and Women’s, MedStar, UCSF, and Yale School of Medicine, as part of its Electronic Health Record Use Research Grant Program. The grants aim to explore the relationship between electronic health record (EHR) use and physician cognitive load, team structures, and care processes. The research seeks to address clinician burnout, improve patient care, and optimize EHR workflows. AMA aims to transform EHR technology into an asset for medical care.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has revealed the nine healthcare organizations chosen for its Electronic Health Record Use Research Grant Program. Brigham and Women’s, MedStar, UCSF, and Yale School of Medicine are among the institutions that will receive funding to investigate the usage patterns of electronic health records (EHRs) among their clinicians.
In total, the AMA will allocate nearly $600,000 to this new group of grant recipients. The objective of the EHR Use Research Grant Program is to gain a deeper understanding of IT usage and discover innovative approaches to prevent clinician burnout, reduce staff turnover, and enhance patient care, teamwork, and resource allocation. Since 2019, the program has awarded over $2 million to fund more than two-dozen research studies across various institutions and EHR-related topics.
This year, the focus of the AMA-funded studies is to explore the correlation between EHR use and physician cognitive load. The research will also investigate the relationships between EHR utilization, team structures, and care team processes.
The nine healthcare systems selected for research grants this year and their respective study areas are as follows:
1. AllianceChicago: Analyzing EHR event log data to investigate the prevalence and factors contributing to relational continuity among patients, physicians, and care teams in primary care.
2. Brigham and Women’s Hospital: Examining the factors influencing the amount of time spent on EHR use and the impact of inbox messages on EHR burden, specifically in a primary care setting.
3. MedStar: Studying the prioritization of EHR inboxes by primary care physicians.
4. Stanford University School of Medicine: Evaluating the frequency of text messaging in the inpatient setting using EHR event log data and other relevant data. This study will also explore the relationship between team stability, inbox message frequency, and whether increased text message interruptions during order entry are associated with higher order entry errors.
5. University of California San Francisco: Assessing the impact of e-visit billing on clinician EHR inbox time, EHR-related work outside scheduled hours, and overall EHR burden.
6. University of Colorado School of Medicine: Investigating the potential of inpatient EHR-based audit log data as a tool to identify instances where work design and workloads contribute to physician burnout and patient harm.
7. University of Wisconsin-Madison: Using EHR event log data to examine the association between team support for medication orders and the time physicians spend on order entry and inbox management in primary care.
8. Wake Forest University School of Medicine: Evaluating the amount of time primary care physicians spend on EHR use during paid time off.
9. Yale University School of Medicine: Expanding on previous research conducted at Yale, this study will delve into physician retention, clinical productivity, and patterns of EHR use in the emergency department.
AMA Vice President of Professional Satisfaction, Dr. Christine Sinsky, stated, “The EHR Use Research Grant Program allows the AMA to collaborate with leading researchers who are working to gain further insights into EHR systems and assess their capacity to support or hinder efficient and effective clinical work. Burdensome EHR systems contribute significantly to the physician burnout crisis, and we must take immediate action, as outlined in the AMA’s Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians. The research supported by the AMA grant program will contribute to the evidence base necessary to transform EHR technology into an asset for medical care rather than a demoralizing burden.”
