In this case report, we describe an initiative to improve physicians’ experience with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), which was one of several strategies developed within our hospital to reduce physician burnout possibly connected to the EHR. We propose a 10 member “EHR SWAT Team” with representation from clinical, educational, technical and project management staff. This team met with physicians across all hospital divisions to collect their issues with the EHR and requests for functionality changes. The team then reviewed these requests, prioritized and fixed them in a timely manner. Through in-person meetings, the EHR SWAT Team gathered 118 issues or change requests, 36.4% of which were related to education and 17% of which were quick fixes. Popular requests included improved search functionality, auto-faxing and auto-saving of notes. 46 physicians completed our short evaluation survey, where 61.3% said that it increased their proficiency in using the EHR. We highlight five important lessons learned from carrying out this initiative including the importance of engaging Information Technology (IT) leadership, physician leadership, and physicians across the hospital. Our next steps include measuring the impact of this initiative on EHR-related burnout through an organizational wide survey and objective back-end usage logs.

This survey data was collected anonymously using paper surveys at the end of the SWAT sessions. Students then helped to tabulate the results and inputted the data into a spreadhseet.