In 2009, an article in Methods of Information Medicine reported that physicians spend 26.6 percent of their time documenting care and 27.5 percent of their time in direct patient care. In their conclusion, the authors wrote, “Computer-based tools and, in some areas, documentation assistants may help to reduce the clinical and administrative documentation efforts.”
More recently, an article by Sinsky et. al. just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that physicians spend 49.2 percent of their time documenting care and 27 percent of their time on direct patient care.