With millions of data points to make sense of, the primary challenges healthcare organizations face today are the ability to influence patient behavior at the point of care and improve the everyday lives of providers facing immense burnout. Communication of timely, patient-specific data encourages providers to engage and adopt new practices.
With limited amounts of time and packed schedules every day, making the most out of little face-to-face time is a challenge both physicians and care managers are used to. In early January of this year, Medscape released its 2021 National Physician Burnout, Depression & Suicide Report. Based on the physicians surveyed, a staggering 42% of them reported feeling burnt out, undoubtedly from the pressure and stress of COVID-19. Consistently, though, the bureaucratic tasks accompanying their work remain a top contributor (58%). Beyond hiring additional staff to tackle administrative tasks, physicians need point-of-care tools that are reliable, easily accessible, and can alleviate some of the administrative burden during a patient encounter.
Comprehensive Patient Face Sheets
A face sheet is a single-page summary of key patient information, often including their demographic information, medication history, and insurance information. Offered virtually or as physical printouts, face sheets provide an attending physician or care manager with all the information needed to complete a patient visit successfully.
To maximize face sheet effectiveness, they should also include current risks and open care gaps, so providers have complete visibility to satisfy quality measures. Additionally, integrations with the native electronic health record (EHR) ensure providers can easily reach assessments, orders, or other information as needed.
Seamless EHR Workflows
EHRs represent one of the areas where providers spend most of their time—an average of 16 minutes per patient visit, according to a study from the Annals of Internal Medicine. The number of clicks required to fulfill EHR documentation has been well reported for years, with estimates reaching 1,500 to 4,000 clicks per physician per day, depending on specialty.
Ensuring care teams have a solution that can display all relevant patient information at once is key to reducing the number of screens, logins, and clicks required to complete documentation. Solutions that can integrate workflows, diagnostic information, and risk analysis directly into the native EHR means providers can spend less time clicking and more time caring for their patients.
Real-Time ADT Alerts
One example of where physicians are harnessing the power of technology is in managing hospital admissions and discharges. Hospital admissions, discharges, and transfers (ADTs) are significant events in a patient’s care journey. In a 2019 analysis from ACEP Now, researchers concluded patients spend approximately three hours in the ER on average before an admission occurs. ADT notifications allow for proactive intervention in cases where hospitalization is unnecessary or can be avoided in favor of a lower-cost alternative. This is especially important as COVID-19 caseloads continue to rise, leaving hospital staff strapped for time and resources while caring for critical patients.
Keeping Providers in Mind
When deciding what phrase could deliver the impact of our mission—improving the quality of care and, therefore, quality of life—we landed on “Every data point makes a difference.” Every person has a different care journey, but the heart of all efforts is to raise their quality of life and help them live more comfortably, longer. A point-of-care solution that takes thousands of data points and consolidates the most pressing coding opportunities, diagnoses, prescriptions, and other relevant care information saves time and allows physicians to make decisions quickly.
At Lightbeam, we put providers first, designing services and solutions to help alleviate unnecessary administrative burden, provide insights in real-time, and ultimately, allow care teams to provide the right care at the right time. It did not take a pandemic for us to see the power and privilege of interacting with patients in the exam room. We wholeheartedly know that empowering care teams with suitable systems and solutions will create life-changing differences for patients at the point of care. It is the greatest, most meaningful contribution we can make.
For more information and resources for empowering care teams and preventing burnout, see our recent webinars: How to Maximize Your Clinical Staffing Model and Tools to Prevent Physician Burnout.
Josh Patten is the Vice President of Operations at Lightbeam.