The American Medical Association this week announced the nine new healthcare organizations who will split nearly $600,000 as part of its Electronic Health Record Use Research Grant Program. 

WHY IT MATTERS
This batch of grant recipients will divvy up some $589,000 from AMA as they research the trends and patterns of how their physicians and nurses use EHRs each day.

The goal of the EHR Use Research Grant Program – which since 2019 has awarded more than $2 million to fund more than two-dozen research studies across a variety of institutions and EHR-related topics – is to learn more about IT usage to help find new ways to prevent clinician burnout and staff turnover, and to innovate new workflows that lead to improved patient care, teamwork and resource allocation.

This year, the AMA-funded studies are meant to learn more about the relationship between EHR use and physician cognitive load. Also, they'll explore relationships between EHR use and team structures and care team processes. 

The nine health systems chosen for research grants this year are:

• AllianceChicago will use EHR event log data to explore both the prevalence and the facilitators of relational continuity among patients, physicians and care teams in primary care.

• Brigham and Women's Hospital will investigate factors that influence the amount of time spent using an EHR and the impact of inbox messages on EHR burden, all in a primary care setting.

• MedStar will study primary care physician EHR inbox prioritization.

• Stanford University School of Medicine will use EHR event log data and other data to evaluate the frequency of text messaging in the inpatient setting, the relationships between team stability and inbox message frequency, and whether higher text message interruptions during order entry are associated with increased order entry errors.

• University of California San Francisco will assess the impact of e-visit billing on clinician EHR inbox time, and work on the EHR after patient scheduled hours and the overall EHR burden.

• University of Colorado School of Medicine will investigate whether inpatient EHR-based audit log data can serve as a useful tool in identifying when work design and workloads are leading to physician burnout and patient harm.

• University of Wisconsin-Madison will use EHR event log data to investigate the association between team support for medication orders and physician time spent on order entry and time on inbox in primary care.

• Wake Forest University School of Medicine will assess primary care physician time spent in the EHR during paid time off.

• Yale University School of Medicine will expand on Yale's previous research studying physician retention, clinical productivity, and patterns of EHR use in the emergency department.

ON THE RECORD
"The EHR Use Research Grant Program allows the AMA to work with researchers who are leading efforts to expand insight into EHR systems and measure the technologies' capacity to support or undermine the delivery of efficient and effective clinical work," said AMA VP of professional satisfaction Dr. Christine Sinsky in a statement.

"Burdensome EHR systems are a leading contributing factor in the physician burnout crisis and demand urgent action as outlined in the AMA's Recovery Plan for America's Physicians. The research supported by the AMA grant program builds the evidence base to help change EHR technology into an asset to medical care, and not a demoralizing burden."