According to the American College of Healthcare Executives, the top issues confronting health systems are personnel shortages, financial challenges and patient quality and safety.
Employee burnout is rampant and many wonder whether it's time to fundamentally reexamine healthcare delivery.
During a roundtable sponsored by Philips at Becker's Hospital Review's 12th Annual Meeting in Chicago, Sam Larson, marketing leader at Philips Capsule, facilitated a discussion about care models and technology-based solutions that can help empower clinical staff.
Five takeaways:
- The shortage of talent across the healthcare spectrum is taking a toll on organizational efficiency. A regional Chief Medical Officer from a health system in the Midwest noted that her organization has developed creative staffing models, such as using paramedics in the emergency department. "Many service lines are limited not by patient capacity or physical space, but by the nursing shortage," she said. Another participant said primary care practices in her organization have lost efficiencies due to the lack of clinical support staff.
- Technology solutions can be a contributor to healthcare burnout. In healthcare settings, EHRs and various IT solutions have proliferated. "We keep adding more things for clinicians to use, but we never take anything away. At some point, there needs to be a conversation about making electronic documentation easier for providers. They can't always be at the bedside and it plays a big role in burnout," an attendee said.
- Health systems are evaluating ways to better address administrative burden. At one organization, portal messages are the leading cause of provider burnout, based on verbal feedback from clinicians. To help mitigate the amount of messages, the system is taking steps to reduce internal messages for clinicians. One session participant explained, "We are piloting remote staff called 'inboxologists' who address in-basket messages on behalf of the provider. This not only enables providers to focus on patients in the office, but we’ve also seen a better turnaround time on messages. The pilot has been a huge win." This organization is also shifting from an RVU-based compensation model to a panel management model that includes blocks of time and billable hours for asynchronous work to address messages. "Clinical isn't strictly what happens in a billable visit," the attendee said.
- Clinicians need tools to automate administrative tasks and make data more actionable. One executive commented, “My biggest concern is that we are treating the computer – our clinicians need to be using their skills and training to assess and focus on the patient.” Another session participant agreed. "We have too much data and we don't know what to do with it," he said. "We need insights that give us actionable insight. There is more value in an alarm, for example, that alerts me to something I need to be doing right now."
- Technology deployments won't be successful without broad buy-in from clinical staff. While smarter technology solutions are needed to reduce staff burnout, implementations will fail unless clinicians are open to using new tools and understand how they will actually help them and their patients. The session attendees observed that the need for change management and an engaged clinical staff are real.
While improving the provider experience has been a longtime goal for health systems and technology vendors, the pandemic and clinician shortage have heightened the need. “Clinicians need solutions that support innovative care models, deliver actionable insights and enable healthcare them to practice at the top of their license to achieve the best outcomes for their patients,” said Mr. Larson. “Philips Capsule is committed to developing IT solutions that deliver on these needs and the perspectives shared by the session participants today will help guide us in this ongoing journey."