Penrod N, Lynch S, Thomas S, Seshadri N, Moore J. 2019. Prevalence and characterization of yoga mentions in the electronic health record. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. 32(6): 790-800. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2019.06.190115
Researchers compared medical records of 30,976 adult patients of Penn Medicine hospital whose electronic health record (EHR)s included a mention of yoga by the patient or provider at a recent health visit with the records of a randomized control cohort (n = 92,919) in a study to characterize clinical documentation of yoga practice and identify medical conditions linked to clinician-recommended yoga intervention at Penn Medicine. Researchers identified outpatients with yoga-related EHRs from November 2006 to November 2016. Researchers determined 3 classes of yoga-related notes: clinician-documented (75%) (current yoga practice), miscellaneous (14%) (ambiguous language, yoga paraphernalia), and clinician-recommended notes (10%) (clinician recommends patient practice yoga). Clinician-recommended notes corresponded to 9 common chronic primary diagnoses: Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, depression, malaise/fatigue, pregnancy, backache, muscle pain/inflammation, hyperlipidemia, and lower back pain. In the 10-year study window, yoga notes increased by 10.4 times. Forty-one clinical service departments, 2,398 clinicians, and 30,976 patients facilitated, wrote, and received clinical yoga notes (the majority in primary care), and 2.6% of outpatient notes mentioned yoga at least once. The study demonstrates the popularity and increased prevalence of yoga interventions and clinician-recommended therapeutic yoga in chronic cases, and that clinician acceptance of yoga as a physical and mental health integrative intervention has increased in treatment of individuals with a wide range of common chronic conditions.