As each year passes we learn about new and recurring challenges within the health care system that are affecting both providers and their patients. One term keeps showing up so frequently that it might as well have a seat at the dinner table – “burnout”.
Though many factors have been cited for the cause of burnout, the American Medical Association and other health care industry organizations have emphasized documentation on electronic health records as a key burden for clinicians. In fact, research in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2016 estimates that physicians spend two hours on EHR systems for every hour of direct patient care, while nurses spend as much as 41 percent of their time on EHRs and documentation. These statistics are seriously alarming.
Put yourself in the shoes of a healthcare worker. Imagine entering a field driven by your passion for helping and being of service to others, only to find that almost half of every work day is, in reality, precious time spent away from the patients that need you the most. Your opportunities to provide superior care are reduced by half, and you are drowning in paperwork, held back by administrative burdens that not only take time away from patient care, but learning new skills and advancing in your field. Suddenly, the spark that ignited that passion starts to fade as lingering burnout ensues. Something has got to give!
As healthcare facilities across the country continue to experience this burnout wave, many are looking for ways they can maximize their staff time and resources by adopting health IT products to improve patient care management and ease the burdens shared by their clinical staff. By bringing in a trusted partner, your facility can do the same and in turn, reduce barriers to accessing medical records, eliminate frustrations related to records review, and decrease the amount of time that your health care professionals are spending on administrative tasks.
Here are three benefits your health care team can experience by partnering with a health care technology and analytics leader:
- Complete administrative tasks with an extension of experts. Administrative duties are essential to a health care operation, but those duties take an insurmountable amount of time and energy away from health care heroes whose time and energy would be better spent delivering superior patient care. Enlist those duties to a team of experts who can streamline your workflows so you’re spending up to 85% less time retrieving and managing patient records, giving you time back into your day so you can have meaningful patient appointments.
- Quick access to medical histories indexed the way the clinician prefers to read them. It’s all in the details, and electronic health record details matter! eHealth Technologies works as an extension of your team, gathering and clinically organizing your patients’ outside medical records prior to their appointments. This reduces the number of unnecessary duplicate records and disparate, unlabeled medical documents. This allows you to have a full picture of your patient’s medical history at a glance so you can be confident in developing an effective treatment plan.
- Create best practices for sharing medical histories between internal teams. With an outside team of experts on your side, you not only have access to your patients’ comprehensive medical histories – you have an entire team to guide you by providing ongoing best practices and support for working seamlessly and effectively across internal business functions.
At the end of the day, we can point to many different causes of physician and clinician burnout. It’s promising to see that health care organizations are taking steps to address the root of the problem. We want to help your health care facility can take steps today to reduce the burdens shared by your staff.
It’s time to call “burnout” a cab so we can make room for more worthy guests at the dinner table.
If your organization is experiencing similar burnout pains, let’s connect.
