Rule A, Bedrick S, Chiang MF, et al. - Changes in the length and redundancy of outpatient progress notes across multiple medical specialties from 2009 to 2018 were measured and association of these measures with author experience and method of note entry was determined.

• A cross-sectional study of about 3 million outpatient progress notes written by 6,228 primary authors across 46 specialties at an academic medical center.

• Overall, there was a significant increase in both measures between 2009 and 2018, potentially limiting their use in patient care.

• There was an increase in the median note length by 60.1% from 401 words in 2009 to 642 words in 2018 and an increase in median note redundancy (ie, the proportion of text identical to the patient’s last note) by 10.9 percentage points from 47.9% in 2009 to 58.8% in 2018.

• Notes written by residents and fellows as well as by more recent hires were significantly longer than those written by more senior authors.