Vendor claims about documentation burden reduction range from fifteen to seventy percent. A comparison of the underlying metrics suggests the range says more about measurement choices than about product differences.

Time in the EHR after hours is the most cited metric and the most sensitive to confounders — it falls when a clinician's panel shrinks, when a scribe is hired, or when the clinician gives up and documents during the visit instead. Note length falls reliably with templating and rises with generation. Click counts measure interface design more than cognitive load.

A working group has proposed a composite that pairs an objective time measure with a validated subjective burden instrument, on the reasonable grounds that the outcome anyone cares about is how the clinician feels at the end of the day, and that this is not fully captured by any log.

Adoption of the composite has been slow, for the predictable reason that it is harder to move and harder to put on a slide. The health systems that have adopted it report smaller improvements than the vendor claims and describe them as more durable.