The question every doctor wants to ask is, will the EHR save me time?

The answer is an obvious: depends.

Here’s a nice little way to break it down into an EHR’s functions (started by gchiu on EMR Update with a few of my own changes):
Takes Less Time

• Finding and Retrieving Notes (milliseconds)
• Doing Refills (minutes)
• Faxing Off Prescriptions (seconds)
• Making Appointments (seconds)
• Looking Up Results (milliseconds)
• Doing Calculations (DAS28, Framingham) (seconds)
• Drug Interactions (seconds)
• Reporting to Recall Patients (minutes)
• Reprinting Letters (seconds)
• Looking Up ICD9s (seconds)

Takes More Time

• Documenting an Encounter (Level of Documentation Is Now Higher than Before?)
• Entering Initial Diagnosis List
• Writing Prescriptions

Please feel free to add to this list in the comments and I’ll update the post. I also started a page on the EMR and EHR wiki of the above EMR and EHR time savings and also started the list of EHR benefits and costs. I certainly encourage more people to contribute there as well.