Stop Charting at Night: Why Customizing Your EMR Templates Is Worth It

Is it worth your time to personalize your electronic medical record (EMR) note templates?

In most systems, there is no protected time built into the week for chart documentation. Clinicians often work after hours and between patients to document and this contributes to burnout (Goldberg, et al., 2024).

So, it is really worth your time to navigate into and through your EMR to personalize note templates?

Yes. Personalized EHR optimization that included workflow and template customization reduced after-hours EHR usage by 17% and burnout (Lourie, et al., 2021). A systematic review identified local customization of templates and workflow as one of three key strategies (alongside training and scribes) to alleviate EHR-related administrative burden (Kruse, et al., 2022). The time investment in customization pays off when it produces templates that are concise, specialty-relevant, and workflow-aligned rather than exhaustive checklists.

But, what about ai scribes? Isn't that supposed to decrease documentation workload?

Ai scribes record what was discussed but do not prompt the clinician to address what was not discussed. Ai scribes are used to generate documents from conversation, but they are not reliable or used to replace clinical action or decision support (Angus, et al., 2025). The template with embedded prompts ensures items are systematically addressed per the clinician and local context needs, regardless of what the patient raises, or what the AI scribe captures.

How does a personalized EMR note template improve my care?

No one template works for every clinician or specialty (Personalized note templates with embedded and contextualized prompts can help a clinician ensure that items are systematically addressed, such as preventative cancer screenings and individualized screenings. Personalized note templates offer an opportunity for the clinician to move through a visit in a way that serves as a cognitive aid, improving note quality, adherence to evidence-based guidelines and with documentation completeness (Landeo-Gutierrez, et al., 2023)(Ebbers, et al., 2022). Structured or standardized note templates are helpful, but do not replace the individual clinician's responsibility to capture the individualized clinical reasoning, patient discussions, and decision-making rationale that constitute a defensible record (Ghaith, et al., 2022)

How do incomplete or unstructured notes contribute to healthcare dysfunction?

Incomplete note documentation is a primary driver of downcoding and lost revenue (Jaqua, et al., 2020), compliance risk for miscoding (Weiner, et al., 2020) and degraded quality metrics that affect organizational reimbursement. Additionally, unstructured or incomplete notes add to "note bloat" with some notes reaching half of all text replicated elsewhere in the chart (Steincamp, et al., 2022), information scatter or overload that can contribute to diagnostic errors (Rule, et al., 2021) and unsafe care coordination (Adler-Milstein, et al., 2021).

References

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Angus DC, Khera R, Lieu T, et al. AI, Health, and Health Care Today and Tomorrow: The JAMA Summit Report on Artificial Intelligence. JAMA. 2025;334(18):1650—1664. doi:10.1001/jama.2025.18490

Ebbers T, Kool RB, Smeele LE, Dirven R, den Besten CA, Karssemakers LHE, Verhoeven T, Herruer JM, van den Broek GB, Takes RP. The Impact of Structured and Standardized Documentation on Documentation Quality; a Multicenter, Retrospective Study. J Med Syst. 2022 May 27;46(7):46. doi: 10.1007/s10916-022-01837-9. PMID: 35618978; PMCID: PMC9135789.

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