How to calculate documentation time as a percentage of your day
Turn notes into a percentage, then into the points it costs you.
Your documentation time percentage is the minutes you spend on notes during paid time, divided by your paid minutes, times 100. On a 450-minute paid day, 40 minutes of notes on the clock is 8.9% of the day.
If your employer doesn't count notes as productive time, that 8.9% is also the number of productivity points the notes cost you. The documentation time calculator works out both, plus your annual hours.
How to calculate documentation time
Documentation time percentage = on-the-clock documentation minutes ÷ paid minutes × 100
Productivity points cost = the same figure, when notes don't count as productive time
Annual hours = daily documentation minutes × days per week × 46 ÷ 60
The 46 working weeks is an assumption that allows for leave and public holidays. Use 48 if you take less time off, or 44 if you take more. At 60 minutes a day, five days a week, that moves the year from 230 hours to 240 or 220.
Worked example
This example assumes 60 minutes of documentation a day, 40 of them on the clock and 20 after you clock out. The paid day is 450 minutes, five days a week.
- Documentation time percentage of the paid day: 40 ÷ 450 × 100 = 8.9%
- Productivity points it costs: 8.9 points
- Weekly total including unpaid notes: 60 × 5 = 300 minutes = 5 hours
- Annual total: 60 × 5 × 46 ÷ 60 = 230 hours, or 28.8 eight-hour working days
- Annual unpaid: 20 × 5 × 46 ÷ 60 = 76.7 hours
The 20 unpaid minutes sit outside the paid day, so they don't appear in the 8.9%. Counted against all the time you work, notes take 60 of 470 minutes, or 12.8%.
What the points cost means
If on-the-clock documentation takes 8.9% of your paid day and doesn't count as productive, the most productivity you can reach is 100 − 8.9 = 91.1%. That ceiling assumes every remaining minute is treatment, with no gaps, no transitions and no patient running late.
Against an 85% target, that leaves 6.1 points of slack for everything else in the day. Against a 90% target it leaves 1.1 points, which means the target only works if documentation moves off the clock.
The same day seen from the treatment side gives a second figure. An 85% target needs 0.85 × 450 = 382.5 minutes of treatment, and 450 − 40 = 410 minutes are left after notes. That is 382.5 ÷ 410 = 93.3% of the remaining time.
Putting a value on the unpaid portion
Annual value = unpaid hours × hourly rate
At 40 an hour, 20 unpaid minutes a day is 20 × 5 × 46 ÷ 60 × 40 = about 3,067 a year. At 45 an hour it is 3,450. Both figures use the unrounded 76.67 hours, the way the calculator does.
If you are salaried, divide your salary by the hours you are paid for in a year to get an hourly figure. In the US, 2,080 hours (40 × 52) is a common convention for a full-time work year, used by the federal government's personnel office (OPM). It is a convention, and OPM itself divides by 2,087 to get hourly pay.
The real hourly rate calculator uses contracted hours × working weeks instead, which for 40 hours and 46 weeks is 1,840. As an example, a salary of 85,000 is 40.87 an hour on 2,080 hours and 46.20 an hour on 1,840. Use the same basis each time you compare. The guide to your real hourly rate works through it.
Use it to show what the unpaid time adds up to. To take the yearly hours and their value to a manager, follow the guide to what therapy documentation costs you.
Conversion table: daily minutes to annual hours
| Minutes per day | Per week (5 days) | Per year (46 weeks) | Working days (8 hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 1.25 hrs | 57.5 hrs | 7.2 |
| 30 | 2.5 hrs | 115 hrs | 14.4 |
| 45 | 3.75 hrs | 172.5 hrs | 21.6 |
| 60 | 5 hrs | 230 hrs | 28.8 |
| 90 | 7.5 hrs | 345 hrs | 43.1 |
| 120 | 10 hrs | 460 hrs | 57.5 |
Working days assume an eight-hour day. Two hours of documentation a day is 460 hours a year, which is 11.5 forty-hour weeks.
Measuring it accurately
Ten working days of tracking, recorded at the end of each day and rounded to five minutes, gives you an average you can defend. Record on-the-clock and off-the-clock minutes separately. On-the-clock notes cost productivity points and off-the-clock notes are unpaid time, so each needs its own figure.
Splitting documentation by type
A single total hides where the time goes. Split it into three types and the fix for each becomes clearer.
- Daily notes. These are many, and each one is short. Templates and capturing data in the room shorten them.
- Evaluations and progress notes. These are few, and each one is long. Scheduling fixes these more than typing speed does. An evaluation-heavy day needs a lower target or a protected block.
- Everything else. Recertifications, prior authorizations, queries from billing and chasing physician orders. This category is easy to forget when estimating.
Ten days of tracking split three ways shows which type takes the most time. That is the one to raise, and a specific request is easier for a manager to act on than a general complaint about paperwork.
Comparing yourself to the department
Documentation speed varies with setting, EMR, caseload complexity and experience. Before concluding you are slow, check how many evaluations you carry compared with colleagues and how complex your caseload is. Also check whether you are covering documentation for anyone else. Any of those can explain a difference of twenty minutes a day.
When the target leaves too little room for notes
Say daily notes take 45 minutes and your target leaves room for 30 minutes of non-productive time. The target is then short by 15 minutes a day. Over 46 weeks of five days, that is 15 × 5 × 46 ÷ 60 = 57.5 hours a year.
Ten minutes a day over a year
Ten minutes a day, five days a week for 46 weeks, is 38.3 hours, or 4.8 eight-hour working days a year. The same conversion works for equipment hunting, waiting on transport, or anything else that recurs daily and feels too small to mention.
A one-off forty-minute delay costs forty minutes once. Eight minutes a day logging into three systems costs you 30.7 hours a year, or 3.8 working days.