AMA Announces 2023 Recipients of EHR Use Research Grant Program

The American Medical Association (AMA) has selected nine organizations as recipients of the 2023 EHR Use Research Grant Program.

The recipients will divide $589,000 to fund projects examining patterns of EHR use to improve clinical workflows, enhance patient care, and prevent clinician burnout.

“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 Christine Sinsky, MD, AMA vice president of professional satisfaction.  

“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,” Sinsky noted. “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.”

The AMA selected the following research projects as 2023 grant recipients:

• AllianceChicago will use EHR event log data to study the prevalence and facilitators of relational continuity among primary care patients, clinicians, and care teams.
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital will research factors that impact end-user EHR screen time in the primary care setting, as well as the impact of inbox messages on EHR burden.
• MedStar Health will study primary care physician EHR inbox prioritization.
• Stanford University School of Medicine will study 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, EHR work after patient scheduled hours, and overall burden.
• University of Colorado School of Medicine will investigate whether inpatient EHR-based audit log data can help identify when workloads are leading to clinician burnout and patient harm.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison will use EHR event log data to research the association between team support for medication orders and physician time spent on order entry in primary care.
• Wake Forest University School of Medicine will study PCP time spent working in the EHR during paid time off.
• Yale University School of Medicine will add to its previous research on physician retention, clinical productivity, and EHR use patterns in the emergency department.

The AMA has awarded more than $2 million to fund 26 research studies since launching the EHR Use Research Grant Program in 2019.