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Editor's Correspondence
July 26, 2010

Time Spent on Clinical Documentation: Is Technology a Help or a Hindrance?—Reply

Author Affiliations

Author Affiliations: Divisions of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (Dr Oxentenko) and General Internal Medicine (Dr West), Department of Internal Medicine, and Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Department of Health Sciences Research (Dr West), Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota; and Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor (Dr Kolars).

Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(14):1276-1277. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2010.229

In reply

We appreciate the insightful comments by Doll and Arora relating to our article on how internal medicine residents spend their time on inpatient services, in which we found that 67.9% of residents reported spending in excess of 4 hours daily on documentation, while only 38.9% reported spending this amount of time in direct patient contact.1 Although feedback on documentation may increase the educational value of this indirect patient care activity, it is infrequently provided.

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