That documentation time is largely driven by the insurance industry which was really painful before these systems. It’s almost shocking how much more productive doctors are inside the VA.
More recently in my field I've seen additional layers of documentation requirements that have nothing to do with insurance, that are entirely state law.
I have no doubt in my mind that if EHR rules didn't exist, they would have been adopted much more gradually, and selection would have been dictated by the ability of EHRs to supply features in demand. More competition would have existed and it would have cost less. Maybe some government regulation would have been needed in terms of interoperability standards but it could have been rolled out much much much better.
I don't think people fully comprehend the cost overruns associated with adoption of EHRs under government mandates, or how big of a shift there was from records being in-house flexible, and provider and patient-driven, to out-of-house inflexible, and IT-corporation-driven.
Cerner has a contract to fix that.
But if medical pricing was such that insurance wasn't required, then patients would better audit their own care receipts and this fraud issue would eliminate itself, and as a side benefit we'd have sane pricing for medical care.