How to Run a Charting Time Audit in Your Podiatry Practice

If notes follow you into the evening or the weekend, the first step is to measure it. A charting time audit takes about two weeks and needs only a notepad or a spreadsheet. It gives you a baseline, so any change you make later (a new workflow, an EMR, an AI scribe) can be judged against real numbers.

Before you start

Decide who is included. One clinician is enough to begin. Pick two normal clinic weeks, not a holiday stretch.

Steps

1. Log each visit. Record the patient visit time, the time the note was started, and the time it was signed.
2. Mark where the charting happened. Use three labels: in the room, between patients, after hours.
3. Flag procedure notes. Debridement, injections, and wound measurements often take the longest to document. Track them separately.
4. Count unsigned notes at the end of each day. This is your same-day completion rate.
5. Note the cause of delays. Common ones are searching for prior findings, retyping measurements, and picking codes.
6. Total the week. Calculate average minutes per note, same-day sign rate, and after-hours minutes.

Reading your results

• A same-day sign rate that drops on procedure-heavy days points to a template or capture problem.
• Heavy after-hours time with short in-room time suggests notes are being deferred rather than being slow.
• Repeated retyping of wound measurements suggests a case for point-and-capture imaging.

What to do next

Pick one change, run it for two weeks, and repeat the audit. The full audit worksheet, along with twelve questions to ask when choosing an EMR or scribe, is in the free AI for Podiatry Playbook.