Burnout is a well-documented problem in the healthcare industry that has only been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over $4.6 billion in time and staff turnover is lost each year. Even as the end of the pandemic nears, this year has proven worse than the last few that preceded it.
An interesting fact is that 40% of clinician stress is actually tied to the use of electronic health records. Many healthcare providers claim that it is the time spent navigating, reading, and updating the aforementioned platforms. Though there are plenty of newfangled systems that employ the use of latest techniques and technologies, many hospitals and facilities have actually maintained their obsolete systems in favor of keeping the status quo.
The value of medical informaticists
More and more industries—the healthcare industry included—have begun to rely on data analysis, which has led to a demand for medical informaticists. Statistics gathered by the US Bureau of Labor have even shown that this particular branch of the industry has grown by over 22% in the last ten years.
The function of a medical informaticist is as the name suggests: they maintain and analyze a healthcare facility’s data by using IT solutions. They can even redesign workflows to suit specific roles, improving efficiency across the board.
Electronic health records, telehealth, patient portal applications, and many other technologies are under the purview of their duties. They can reduce the number of clicks it takes to access relevant information, redesign the user interface for greater ease of access, capture the most critical information from patient visits, and detect patterns that can be exploited to provide healthcare.
Most importantly, they can streamline all the processes involved, reducing the amount of time and energy that goes into information management. By diversifying a healthcare professional’s skills, medical facilities all across the world can improve their operations.
Some effective practices and strategies
This field of the healthcare industry has grown gradually over the years; through this growth, quite a few effective patterns and strategies have been discovered and developed. Some of these are:
- Finding superusers. Superusers are clinicians who have showcased incredible expertise in health IT solutions. The vast knowledge and impressive skills of these individuals are definitely resources that need to be exploited. They are likely to have innovative ways of managing medical information that others might not have thought of.
- Consulting end users. In a plan to implement a new system or interface for managing medical information, it is always important to consult end users—whether these are medical professionals or patients. This can make the onboarding of new systems run much more smoothly, reducing the adjustment and shortening the learning curve.
- Prioritizing projects. A top-to-bottom upgrade of your medical IT systems is no small task and should be approached with great care. As such, it is important to discuss with all departments in an organization to determine which aspects of their projects are most valuable and will make the most out of improved IT services. This can help an organization take the endeavor step by step, introducing new systems slowly rather than suddenly.
Final thoughts
Stagnation is not a phenomenon medical organizations can abide by. There are clear problems in the system that are causing medical professionals to feel stressed and burned out—problems that are easily fixed through the implementation of modern technologies and newly-developed disciplines. One significant way the issue of clinician burnout can be solved is through the necessary skills of medical informaticists.
For other developments in the healthcare industry, give our other articles at Dose of Healthcare a read. We are dedicated to keeping healthcare professionals updated with the latest news, trends, and innovations in the healthcare industry.
