| Question | Short answer | Key takeaway |
|---|---|---|
| Does an EHR take time away from clinicians? | Some, yes: one physician says he went from spending 90% of consultation time facing the patient to at least 50% behind the screen. | Lost time comes from double data entry and poorly designed screens. |
| Is focus charting faster when it is digital? | Yes, when the data, action and response sections are fields in the record. | Structuring nursing notes means they never have to be copied again. |
| Where does the lost time come from? | From documentation entered several times, from searching for information and from statistics recalculated by hand. | Every piece of data re-entered is time taken from the patient. |
| How can an EHR give time back? | By asking for each piece of information only once and carrying it over wherever it is needed. | Single data entry is the first concrete gain. |
| Do quality statistics take time? | Yes: many maternity units still keep them in spreadsheets filled in by hand. | A structured EHR produces them without recounting. |
| Does AI save a lot of time? | Less than advertised: randomised trials on ambient scribes measure about one minute per consultation. | The most cited gain is attention given back to the patient. |
| What matters in an emergency? | Seeing the essentials of the record in a few seconds, without flipping through pages. | Readability saves time at 3 a.m. |
| When does the gain appear? | After the learning period, once the tool is no longer a topic of conversation. | The first weeks often feel like the opposite. |
“We are going to spend more time on the screen than with our patients.” It is the most common objection to clinical documentation time whenever a hospital announces a new EHR (electronic health record), and it is far from irrational. For many clinicians, going digital first meant more boxes to tick.
The figures partly prove them right. During an agora session at SantExpo 2026, a physician summed up how his job has changed: consultations went from 90% of the time facing the patient to “at least 50%” behind the screen (SantExpo 2026). Documentation, essential as it is, has taken up room nobody had planned for.
At Galeon, an EHR built with clinicians since 2016 and used by more than 10,000 healthcare professionals, time is the question our teams hear most often. Here is what really wastes time, what gives it back, and what to expect from AI.
An EHR only gives time back to the patient once it stops asking for the same information twice.
A poorly designed EHR does, yes. Lost time does not come from computers as such, but from double data entry, screens that force pointless confirmations, and information that cannot be found.
A coordinator of the mother and child department at a large maternity unit puts it simply: “we are swamped by everything to do with documentation”. She adds that it is “hugely important”, but that being a clinician “isn’t only that”. That is the tension: documentation protects the patient and the team, but it must not eat into care time.
A speaker at a round table held by the French Hospital Federation (FHF) went further, calling the claim that “digital saves doctors time” a “cliché”: in most use cases, the real gain is small (FHF round table, SantExpo). This scepticism is healthy: it forces us to show where time is actually saved.
From three main sources: re-entering information that is already known, searching for scattered data, and indicators recalculated by hand.
With a paper record, information was copied from form to form. Many software packages simply reproduced this on screen. A clinician who enters a patient’s weight three times loses time and creates a risk: which value is correct? One hospital illustrated the problem publicly: in its former EHR, asking for the patient’s weight meant finding several values in free-text fields, which amounted to having none (SantExpo 2025).
A paper record can only be consulted in one place at a time. A midwife describes it this way: while she is writing in the record, the gynaecologist cannot write in it, and the nursing assistant who has gone to give the baby a bath is waiting for it. A readable EHR removes this waiting, provided the information is in the right place.
This is the least visible loss of time. In a maternity unit with nearly 5,000 births a year, “all our statistics are done by hand in Excel spreadsheets”, its coordinator explains: caesarean, episiotomy and induction rates, preterm births. This work falls to nurse managers, every year, to prove the quality of care.
By asking for each piece of data only once, carrying it over wherever it is useful, and producing indicators without recounting.
A head of obstetrics and gynaecology using Galeon sums it up: “we enter the important data only once, and it is then carried over into every box needed for the quality of the medical record”. For him, it is “a tool that finally saves us time instead of wasting it”.
Gains also hide in small usability details. A paediatric nursing assistant mentions the button that ticks a newborn’s normal examination in one go: “it saves us loads of time, especially in emergency departments”. A midwife mentions picking up an old record in two minutes. It is these seconds, repeated dozens of times per shift, that make the difference.
Finally, structured data makes statistics instant. One head of a maternity department says he tracks his caesarean, episiotomy and haemorrhage rates in real time, so he can correct any drift as soon as it appears. A team in a regional hospital group (GHT) in south-west France sends its figures to management every month “without having to recalculate from the delivery register”.
By structuring it. Focus charting (known in France as “transmissions ciblées”) organises nursing notes around a focus (a patient problem or concern) and three sections: data, action, response, often abbreviated DAR. In an EHR, these sections become fields, and information entered once feeds the rest of the record.
On paper, a focus note is hard to read from one team to the next and gets copied from one medium to another. Digitised, it can be found in seconds by focus, is shared between the day and night teams, and contributes to documentation without writing things twice. It is also a concrete example of what clinicians expect from AI: help to write these notes faster, which some nursing directors are already asking for (SantExpo 2026).
Yes, and it is often the most appreciated gain. Being able to understand a patient’s situation in a few seconds changes care when nothing is scheduled.
A midwife at a local maternity unit describes it precisely: “sometimes it’s 3 a.m., you want to open the screen and see, bang, bang, bang, OK, there’s this, watch out”. Another team talks about the summary displayed when the record opens: “we already know who this patient is without spending three hours flipping through pages”.
Readability also removes a very concrete irritant: illegible handwriting. At least four clinicians interviewed by Galeon spontaneously cite the end of deciphering handwritten notes as a daily relief.
Less than trade shows promise. Available measurements show modest gains in minutes, but a clearer benefit in the attention paid to the patient.
During an agora session at SantExpo 2026, a cardiologist recalled the two randomised trials published in NEJM AI on ambient scribes (tools that draft the report from the conversation): about one minute saved per consultation in one, 22 minutes per day in the other (SantExpo 2026). A surgeon at a large hospital in the Paris region, after six weeks of use, said he finished his clinic “at the same time”, but looked at the patient more than at the screen.
Time saved is the easiest criterion to measure, not the most important one. For AI as for the EHR, the real question is whether the tool lives inside the record or next to it: a generated report that has to be copied and pasted into the EHR recreates exactly the re-entry we wanted to eliminate. We cover this point in detail in our article on AI-generated clinical notes.
| Criterion | Traditional EHR | Galeon approach |
|---|---|---|
| Entering a piece of data | Often re-entered in several forms | Entered once, carried over where it is needed |
| Normal examination | Each item confirmed one by one | Grouped confirmation when everything is normal |
| Opening the record | Navigating between tabs to piece the history together | Summary of history and alerts on opening |
| Quality statistics | Manual extraction or spreadsheets | Indicators drawn from structured data |
| Shared access | One workstation, one user, sometimes a single site | Record accessible to the team and across sites in a region |
| Vocabulary | Free text, different terms from one generation to the next | Structured fields that standardise records |
| Adjusting screens | According to the vendor’s roadmap | Requests raised by the department and built in |
| Documentation AI | External tool, copied and pasted into the record | Goal: an AI that writes into the structured record |
Does an EHR save nurses time?
Yes when it eliminates re-entry and makes information readable; no if it adds confirmations. The gain appears after the learning period.
Why does it feel like you spend more time on the screen with new software?
Because the first weeks are a learning period. The feeling reverses once using the tool becomes second nature.
How do you measure the time saved by an EHR?
Compare before and after on specific tasks: picking up a record, producing monthly statistics, finding a medical history item in an emergency.
Can maternity unit statistics be automatic?
Yes, if the record is structured. Caesarean or episiotomy rates are then calculated without recounting, provided the fields are filled in.
Will AI eliminate data entry?
Not in the short term. Measurements show modest gains; the main benefit is a more complete report and attention given back to the patient.
What is focus charting?
A nursing documentation method organised around a focus (a patient problem) and three sections: data, action, response. Digitised, it is easier to find and share.
What is single data entry?
The principle that a piece of information is entered only once in the record, then reused wherever it is needed.
The objection “we are going to spend more time on the screen than with our patients” is well founded: some physicians now spend half of their consultation behind a screen. Lost clinical documentation time comes from re-entry, scattered information and statistics recalculated by hand. An EHR gives time back when it applies single data entry, shows the essentials on opening and produces indicators effortlessly. AI will bring an additional gain, more modest than advertised, provided it writes into the record rather than next to it. This is the principle that has guided how Galeon has been built with clinicians since 2016.
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