ACP suggestions for reducing physician burden from low-value EHR alerts

The American College of Physicians (ACP) has long been an advocate of reducing burden on physicians, now calling for a reduction of low-value electronic health record (EHR) alerts and messaging functions in its most recent position statement.

“We know that our members are overburdened by EHR inbox/in-basket items,” Ross W. Hilliard, MD, FACP, chair of the ACP Medical Informatics Committee, said in an organizational release. “These drive burnout and frustration, as the tasks seem to be unending and are generally uncompensated, though they are important for good patient care. There are also lots of additional alerts that are generally distracting though intended to be helpful.”

Additionally, the ACP suggests that EHR vendors can assist in the proper categorization and redirection of messages as either appropriate or unnecessary for care. According to Hilliard, “…we know that there are chances to help reduce message and alert burden across the board.”

One recommendation involves vendors providing standard and freely available features that would automatically log the volume of alerts and messages by category. The data could then be used in order to reduce the volume of low-value alerts. Another suggestion is to ensure necessity and usefulness of a message prior to launch. The ACP also recommends the removal of physicians from the messaging chain, thereby streamlining alerts and messages so the physician is rarely the first person on the team to see them. Further recommendations advise for the inclusion of physicians in the design and testing of new systems and further research into the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) implementation into EHRs.

“There are huge opportunities to continue to address low-value messages/alerts and to redirect tasks to members of the care team that are best suited to address [them],” Hilliard said. “We have seen some vendors recognize the value of limiting message volume and the need to suppress some low-value messages.”

Hilliard emphasized the importance of ACP members’ involvement, saying, “Members can continue to share cases where alerts/messages/work in the EHR are not valuable or at the level of physician work. This allows us to keep advocating for the decreased workload and messages/alerts.”