For every 15 minutes a physician spends with patients, they spend an average of nine minutes charting notes in their EHR software, according to Tebra research. That ratio explains why documentation and charting now rank as the number one driver of physician burnout — tying with difficult patients and surpassing bureaucratic red tape and other workplace stressors.

The frustration isn't about technology itself, but with systems that weren't designed for clinical reality. These inefficiencies create after-hours "pajama time," cause cognitive overload, and foster a sense that data entry has replaced patient care as the core of medical practice.

Below, we examine how EHR workflows contribute to exhaustion and how small practices can reclaim their time.

Physician burnout is a chronic state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion caused by sustained workplace stress, most commonly driven by administrative and documentation demands.

Identifying burnout requires looking beyond general fatigue to the specific metrics of clinical exhaustion. According to Tebra's 2025 Physician Burnout Survey, burnout is characterized by three core symptoms: 

When more than half of providers report mental exhaustion, the issue is systemic rather than individual. For private practices, the consequences are tangible: clinical errors increase, turnover costs rise, and the quality of patient care becomes inconsistent.

Burnout also translates to recruitment challenges, higher turnover costs, and inconsistent patient care. It's expensive in every sense of the word.

Documentation is the primary driver of physician burnout because it consumes clinical time, increases cognitive load, and forces physicians into hours of non-reimbursable clerical work.

When physicians ranked their top burnout contributors in Tebra’s survey, documentation and charting landed at number one, cited by 16% of providers overall. That burden is even higher in certain specialties: 26% of primary care physicians and 23% of mental health providers point to documentation as their primary stressor.

Inefficient systems increase cognitive load through complex interfaces and force physicians to perform non-reimbursable clerical tasks. Essentially, these systems often require physicians to prioritize data entry over patient connection.

The daily schedule illustrates this imbalance. If a provider spends nine minutes charting for every 15 minutes of patient interaction, they are losing about a third of their clinical day to a screen. This ratio of patient-to-charting time signals a fundamental misalignment between clinical work and administrative overhead, leaving little room for the human element of medicine.

The documentation burden impacts patient care by reducing provider-patient eye contact, increasing the risk of clinical errors, and causing administrative bottlenecks that delay treatment.

Documentation burden refers to the time and cognitive effort physicians spend on EHR charting, administrative data entry, and compliance tasks that do not directly involve patient care.

The consequences of the documentation burden in healthcare eventually reach the exam room, altering the patient-provider relationship in measurable ways. When providers spend visits staring at screens, eye contact decreases and conversations may feel rushed. Patients notice when their doctor seems more focused on the computer than on them, and satisfaction scores reflect that disconnect.

One primary care physician based in Ohio described it plainly: “While burnt out, I am more prone to providing lower-quality care in the form of less in-depth chart review, less chart audits, less in-depth notes, and less time and energy spent performing effective patient counseling.”

Beyond the exam room, documentation delays create operational bottlenecks. Charts that are not closed promptly lead to billing delays and impacted cash flow. Incomplete documentation can also result in denied claims or compliance issues, meaning the administrative burden eventually affects the practice’s financial health.

Inefficient EHR workflows drive burnout by forcing clinicians to adapt to rigid software; practices can fix this by optimizing clinical documentation workflows and improving EHR usability.

The documentation burden that fuels physician burnout doesn’t come from a single broken feature. It comes from clinical documentation workflows that force providers to adapt to the software — instead of software adapting to clinical reality. The good news: each of the most common pain points has a clear operational fix.

Documentation that can't be completed during clinic hours must still be completed. "Pajama time" captures this reality: an average of 1.2 hours on clinic days and 1.3 hours on weekends, according to a study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, spent finishing notes, responding to messages, completing orders, and reviewing charts.

The solution: AI-assisted documentation changes what’s possible within the clinical day. By generating draft notes, automating repetitive entries, and supporting real-time documentation, integrated AI tools allow providers to close charts faster — often before the workday ends. The impact isn’t just efficiency; it’s reclaiming personal time.

Many legacy EHRs offer limited customization unless a practice can afford ongoing IT support, which results in a poor EHR user experience for small practices. Rigid templates don’t reflect how providers actually think, document, or treat patients. The result is workarounds — sticky notes, duplicate spreadsheets, and mental tracking — that increase time, errors, and frustration.

The solution: Practices see immediate relief when they move to EHRs designed for small teams and specialty-specific workflows. Customizable templates, role-based workflows, and integrated clinical tools reduce the need for workarounds and allow documentation to happen naturally during the visit, not after hours.

EHR systems generate constant pop-ups, notifications, and alerts. While some are clinically vital, many are irrelevant, and providers can't easily distinguish between the two.

The result is alert fatigue: providers begin ignoring or clicking through warnings automatically, potentially missing the ones that matter. Meanwhile, patient portal messages pile up, adding another layer of work that often isn't reimbursable. This creates a double burden of interruption and obligation.

The solution: Smarter EHR workflows reduce noise by routing tasks appropriately and automating low-value actions. Consider optimizing alert systems by filtering recipients by relevance and priority, tailoring alerts by activity, and configuring the system to eliminate redundant alerts. For more tips, check out our guide on reducing EHR alert fatigue.

Many EHR systems require excessive clicks and force providers to hop between fragmented modules, burying critical information behind multiple screens. Each unnecessary click adds a cognitive burden that interrupts clinical thinking. Over a busy day, these micro-frustrations compound:

The solution: EHRs built around single-view clinical workflows reduce navigation and cognitive switching. When patient history, medications, notes, and orders live in one place — and templates reflect real-world encounters — documentation becomes faster, cleaner, and less mentally taxing.

Choosing an EHR for small practices involves prioritizing EHR usability and integrated workflows to minimize the administrative burden in healthcare and simplify complex clinical tasks.

Enterprise EHRs built for large health systems often overwhelm small practices with unnecessary complexity. Cloud-based platforms designed specifically for practices with 1–10 providers offer a different approach.

Staff proficiency within 7–10 days is realistic with the right system. Integrated workflows that combine eRx, labs, telehealth, and billing in a single view reduce the screen-hopping that fragments attention and adds clicks throughout the day.

Reclaiming the clinical day requires shifting from fragmented legacy software to intuitive, AI-assisted platforms that reduce documentation time and restore professional satisfaction.

Reducing the documentation burden goes beyond improving efficiency to restore professional satisfaction. When small practices move away from rigid legacy systems towards intuitive, AI-assisted platforms, they do more than save time: they protect providers from the exhaustion that leads to turnover and medical errors. 

If you feel buried in documentation, the question isn't whether better options exist. The question is whether the cost of staying with an inefficient system outweighs the effort of making a change. By prioritizing usability and integration, your practice can shift the focus back to what matters most: patients. 

Ready to see an EHR designed for private practices in action? Schedule a personalized Tebra demo today.