Hospital leaders must highlight the advantages new technologies bring to the medical field to assuage physicians' worries, Leon Leach, former executive vice president and chief business officer of Houston-based MD Anderson Cancer Center wrote in an op-ed for athenaInsight.
Most physicians enter the medical field out of a desire to help patients, however, "physicians don't enjoy everything that comes along with caregiving these days," Mr. Leach wrote. "The various laws they have to comply with … negotiations with managed-care companies and the day-to-day management involved in running an office."
One of the chief complaints physicians have centers on technology. The "ever-evolving, ever-more-complicated technology tools" lead physicians to feel unstable about their futures, with mid- and late-career physicians feeling especially burdened.
However, for many physicians, it's more than just feeling frustrated with imperfect technology. These physicians also fear a wider technological revolution around automation will leave them to act as "high-level mechanics, simply implementing instructions from an iPad or other device."
Mr. Leach suggested "there is a fear that automation of medicine will lead to a loss of autonomy in care." To avoid this concern among physicians, he recommended hospital leaders highlight the advantages of new technologies, such as how it may streamline reporting requirements or address inconsistent patient outcomes.
"What's driving [physicians] is the desire to change things, to help their patients," Mr. Leach wrote. "Healthcare leaders need to assure them they still live in a world that will fund and encourage that kind of work, that we are committed to making technology a tool to free them up to do even more of it."
To access Mr. Leach's op-ed, click here.