I enjoyed hosting a webinar with Lightbeam’s Vice President of Product Services, Celia Whatley, on the Tools to Prevent Physician Burnout. Burnout among the provider community continues to be a widespread sentiment, and in the year of a pandemic, many physicians and nurses are undoubtedly overextended. That overextension prompted us to present what we feel are the must-have solutions that can improve the demands of a provider’s every day.
First: Why?
According to the 2020 Medscape National Physician Burnout, Depression & Suicide Report, 42% of physicians reported being burned out. Most burned-out physicians are urologists (54%), neurologists (50%), and nephrologists (49%). Family medicine ranks in the top five at 46%. Many factors contribute to the feelings of burnout, but not surprisingly, it is the number of bureaucratic tasks, long hours, and lack of respect that are leading causes.
Face-to-face time with patients is critical in determining the next steps in care. However, feeling constrained by the number of other things that must be done in one day can hinder that time. Another sad reality is the damage burnout can do to personal relationships. Unfortunately, 45% of the physicians in the report said the primary way they cope is to isolate themselves from others.
What Are Some Solutions to Maximize Time at the Office?
Healthcare’s continued shift to a more digitized realm can be used to empower physicians and their care teams. There are more than just the five below tools to create the ultimate suite for provider engagement. For more, I recommend downloading the Physician Engagement Checklist for Value-Based Care. To start, though, these are some of the must-haves:
- A Comprehensive Provider View
A population health management solution should offer a provider view that presents all of their information on a single screen. Easy navigation to their chosen electronic health record (EHR) is also a must. The ability to drill down by patients to see if they are compliant with care plan steps, understand where they lack in quality measures, and visualize how providers stack up in their performance guarantee measures simplifies the search for actionable insights. A comprehensive provider view within a solution is a fundamental place to start value-based care efforts in patient improvement and utilization numbers.
- An Integrated Provider EHR Workflow
Rather than switching to a separate application that caters to each vendor’s use, it helps to have applications integrated directly into a provider’s EHR workflow with the ability to write data back into it automatically. Consolidated workflows maximize time spent with patients during appointments by allowing them to retrieve the information they need quickly. Integration can also utilize the notification opportunities in the EHR to get data where providers need it.
- A Point of Care Facesheet
Facesheets are a one-page summary of a patient’s care status. A facesheet includes the patient’s care opportunities, current diagnoses, medications, lab results, and other information on one simplified page. At Lightbeam, facesheets can be automatically generated at a provider’s location based on the appointment schedule that the solution pulls. These documents can be printed, saved electronically as a document, or posted directly to the patient’s chart in the provider’s EHR. One typical configuration is having multiple facesheets for the patients coming in the day printed before the office opens. This way, critical information is disseminated to the appropriate people with plenty of time to review ahead of time.
- A Detailed KPI Dashboard
A detailed key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard helps providers stay on top of their patients’ health and on track financially. The dashboard should provide an uncomplicated way for the provider to see and act on critical performance metrics and benchmarks. The Lightbeam KPI dashboard allows providers to see information like their cost and utilization metrics, emergency room metrics, Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) numbers, and transitional care management (TCM) metrics on a single screen.
- Mobile-Friendly ADT Insights and Notifications
Providers know the unexpected can happen at any minute. Hospital admissions, discharges, and transfers (ADTs) are significant events in a patient’s care journey. With Lightbeam, mobile-friendly ADT insights can send notifications of these and other care developments via text, configurable by preference. Providers can also schedule different reports to receive via email daily or as often as wanted. The key is not to waste time going from application to application to find the answers to critical questions; provider tools to mitigate burnout and frustration should be all in one place.
With the technology we have at our fingertips today, there are ways to simplify the demands of a provider’s busy schedule to ensure their patients receive quality care. To learn more about these and other provider tools in depth, watch the webinar in the Lightbeam Education Center. For any questions about Lightbeam’s provider burnout tools, contact us here.
Brian Russell is Lightbeam’s Director of Integration Services.