Physician burnout risk could be cut from the root with the optimization of EHRs in order to promote clinical efficiency, physician workflow and better usability. Nowadays, EHR usage can be regarded as universal, as almost 100% of healthcare settings have it implemented. The digitization of healthcare is a huge leap, but it also comes with a few issues. Most healthcare organizations state that one of these issues is physician burnout.
Physician burnout is a long term condition caused by constant exposure to stress and emotional exhaustion. The problem is that physician burnout can directly affect the way physicians provide required care. Many physicians struggling with burnout syndrome will ultimately leave practice, and this again affects patients, who are not able to get continuous access to the same level of care. Since many physicians cite EHR required work as a main leading cause for burnout, there are a few tips that could be implemented to keep these problems away.
For example, administrative tasks could be transferred from the clinician to the medical scribe. This would immediately relieve a certain pressure from the physician. Studies show that physicians spend too much time on EHR data entry. Some physicians spend even up to 6 hours or even more from their workday on such administrative tasks. By having other experts taking over the responsibility of data entry, physicians can dedicate more time to patient-doctor interactions, exams, or reviewing medical journals.
Then, AI – Artificial Intelligence, speech or voice recognition systems could also ease the burden of the physicians. Such systems allow physicians to dictate important notes rather than performing data entry manually. This would further help to automatize the entire process better. There are plenty of health tech companies that work assiduously to integrate AI and other similar functionalities into the EHR systems. These are quite user friendly tools and they all help increasing physician workflow, and allowing them more time for patient face to face visits which is extremely important. EHR interfaces that come integrated with virtual assistants will pull out patient documentation. Make orders for medicine refills and present specific patient data to the physician upon voice command request.
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