Speakers: Nate Apathy

Nate Apathy

Assistant Professor, Health Policy & Management
University of Maryland

 

Nate Apathy’s research sits at the intersection of health policy, health services research, and health informatics. He studies the role of health information technology in supporting delivery and payment reform efforts, as well as the impact of regulations on health IT innovation, adoption, and use. He specializes in the use of system-generated log data to better understand how health IT affects care quality.

His current research focuses on identifying sources of IT-related burden and developing organizational strategies to reduce that burden. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Health Affairs, Health Services Research, JAMA Internal Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, The American Journal of Managed Care, Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Frontiers in Measuring Clinician Work Using EHR Log Data

The digitization of the health care industry has created unprecedented opportunity to measure previously unobservable dimensions of clinical care, patient trajectories, and outcomes. Similarly, the ubiquity of electronic health records (EHRs), especially enterprise-wide integrated systems, has enabled the measurement of physician and care team time in highly granular detail. In this presentation, I will explore several frontier use cases for EHR usage log data in exploring estimates of clinician work in EHRs, including estimates of total & face-to-face visit time, daily time for patients without visits, and work between visits. I will also discuss the potential role of artificial intelligence tools in these measurement methods and the implications of these methods for clinical practice, policy, and the US clinician workforce.