Why Physicians Should Master Their EHR
Posted Dec 30, 2024
Your EHR can be your enemy or your ally — and the difference is almost entirely how you set it up. Small, upfront changes compound into hours saved every week. Here's how to make your electronic health record work for you.
Your EHR Can Work For You — A Quick Story
A friend of mine, an endocrinologist, called me stuck. To see her full EHR on a small laptop screen, she'd set her zoom to 75% — but the help desk couldn't help, because the zoom buttons only moved in 25% jumps and they had no larger screen to offer. On our video call, I showed her one trick: instead of the plus/minus buttons, type the exact zoom percentage. She dialed it to 96%, everything fit, and her problem was solved in seconds. The lesson: a practicing clinician's understanding of the workflow is different from — and complements — what IT support can offer. Both matter.
Why EHRs Became So Complex
Since the HITECH Act tied bonuses and penalties to EHR adoption, these systems have grown enormously. They're no longer simple interfaces for notes, labs, and medications — they now run outpatient and inpatient care, pharmacy, labs, radiology and cardiology PACS, and pathology, plus powerful analytics for research and operations. The tradeoff: they're complicated, and the average user taps only a small fraction of what the system can do.
The Hidden Cost of a Bad Default: A 15-Minute Detour
Picture the drive from a new house to work. There's a direct route that takes 10 minutes and a longer one that takes 25. If someone once showed you only the 25-minute way, you might drive it forever. Fifteen extra minutes seems trivial — until you do it twice a day, every workday. That's 2.5 hours a week and roughly 120 hours a year. Your EHR defaults work the same way: a slightly inefficient setup quietly costs you enormous time.
Customize Your Interface: Epic and Cerner
Both Epic and Cerner ship with generic default layouts that need adjustment, because physician workflows vary so widely. Investing time upfront to arrange your tabs pays off for years.
In Epic, I arrange my primary menu by frequency of use — rooming, plan, results, chart review, synopsis up top and large; less-used menus below. The settings wrench under each tab lets you reorder things (for example, pulling results to the top instead of digging through chart review).
In Cerner, the provider view acts as a home base built on three panes — a left application menu, a middle data pane, and a right communication pane for documentation. Arranged well, you can navigate on the left and middle while writing on the right, all on one screen. It isn't preset, so it takes manual setup — but I've configured it for many colleagues who were grateful for the difference.
Know the Core Functions — They're Not Just for Power Users
Make sure you can confidently write notes, place orders, send prescriptions, prescribe controlled substances, message other providers and your staff electronically, and place charges — plus set up any third-party links through your informatics team. These are core functionalities, not advanced tricks, so focus during your orientation session to get them right.
And don't treat the help desk or your trainers as infallible. The people teaching you may not know the most efficient method, and a help-desk fix may need revision. Keep investigating, keep improving your own workflow, and keep voicing concerns — that's how the system, and your use of it, gets better.
Build Your Workflow Once, Then Refine
Studying workflow management for my clinical informatics board exam drove this home: different physicians work in genuinely different orders — some start with labs and imaging, others with appointments and documents. The advantage of your EHR is that you can set your default once, and that handles about 90% of the work; future tweaks are minor.
The best approach is to simulate a full patient encounter — from opening the chart to finishing your note — and reorder the components to match. As an illustration, my Cerner left-menu runs chief complaint → care recommendations (quality metrics) → visit list → problem list → documents → home medications → opioid review → allergies → histories → vitals → labs → radiology → pathology → clinical media → orders → charge entry. My documentation pane follows HPI → ROS → physical exam → assessment/plan → procedures/diagnostics.
Map out your own. If you find yourself rearranging things after a few days, that's a healthy sign — it means you're becoming more aware of how you actually work. A few minutes of setup saves far more down the line.
The Bottom Line
Your EHR rewards the time you invest in it. Learn the core functions, customize your interface to your real workflow, and refine as you go — and you'll reclaim hours that a default setup would quietly cost you.
Want the full system? Physician Efficiency Mastery covers EHR optimization, faster note-writing, and workflow design step by step — CME-accredited and built for practicing physicians.
References & Further Reading
AMA Journal of Ethics — The HITECH Act: An Overview: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/hitech-act-overview/2011-03
MD Efficacy © 2026, All Rights Reserved.
By visiting this page, you agree to Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, & Earnings Disclaimer.