The Grand Declicking

The average physician now spends two hours on electronic health records (EHRs) for every hour of direct patient care. That imbalance—fueled by a relentless rise in checkboxes, dropdowns, and mandatory clicks—has become a silent epidemic eroding the doctor-patient relationship. It's time for a Grand Declicking.

Healthcare has normalized what I call click creep: the gradual, seemingly innocuous multiplication of digital interactions that steal clinician attention. Every extra checkbox, every forced acknowledgment form, every repetitive data-entry field pulls a doctor’s eyes away from a patient’s face and onto a screen. The result? Increased burnout, decreased empathy, and medical errors born of distraction. This is not just a usability annoyance—it is a patient safety crisis waiting to happen.

The Grand Declicking movement aims to reverse this trend by systematically auditing and eliminating unnecessary clicks within clinical software. Rooted in the principles of human-centered design and backed by emerging evidence, the movement argues that simplicity should be a core requirement—not an afterthought—for any healthcare technology. The 21st Century Cures Act’s information blocking rules and the recent push for electronic health record (EHR) usability standards have created a regulatory window for change. Yet adoption remains slow, weighed down by legacy systems and vendor inertia.

At the heart of the problem lies a paradox: digital health tools were supposed to streamline care, not complicate it. Since the meaningful-use era began in 2011, the average number of clicks required to complete a routine task like prescribing or ordering a lab has more than doubled. A 2023 AMA study found physicians perform nearly 4,000 keyboard strokes and 1,000 mouse clicks during a typical ten-hour shift. That cognitive load leaves little room for the nuanced thinking that complex diagnoses demand.

Dr. Sachin Jain, author of the Forbes piece that coined the phrase, argues that the Grand Declicking is not merely an operational initiative but a moral imperative. “Every extra checkbox steals attention from patients,” he writes. Jain points to organizations like the Stanford Medicine’s Human-Centered AI group and the American Medical Association’s EHR improvement collaborative as early adopters. Some hospitals have already reduced click burdens by 30% after implementing redesigned workflows, reclaiming thousands of hours annually for patient interaction.

Broader implications extend beyond medicine. The Grand Declicking mirrors a wider reckoning with digital overcomplication in industries from finance to education. As generative AI matures, it offers a path to automate documentation automatically—turning conversations into structured notes without manual entry. But technology alone won’t suffice. Cultural change is needed: a commitment from hospital leadership to reward simplicity and penalize feature bloat.

The coming years will test this movement. Key milestones include the next ONC certification criteria for EHRs, which may incorporate readability and click-count metrics. Physician advocacy groups are pushing for mandatory usability testing before software deployment. If successful, the Grand Declicking could restore the human connection at the core of healing—one fewer click at a time.