The ongoing pandemic, and particularly its surges of highly transmissible variants, has created increased stress on clinicians using EHRs. The problem is that the stress was already there for clinicians before the pandemic. EHRs are notoriously difficult to use and have time consuming processes. It’s a big reason why we built our HealthyData Platform in the first place.
We’ve always been excited to see a stack (or closet full) of paper in an HIM department disappear because our software has automated the data entry and routing processes. What makes us even more excited though is a bit more difficult to measure. When a clinician is with a patient, we don’t want them to have to click more times to find the correct scanned image of a lab result and then find the figure they’re looking for. We want the discrete data already in the patient’s medical record so the clinician can be more present with the patient in front of them, see more patients, and deliver better diagnosis and treatment decisions.
A study from Stephanie Hoelscher, DNP of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Serena Bumpus, DNP of Ascension aims to find out where efficiencies can be gained in the documentation process to adapt to times of extreme hospital volumes like a pandemic. While the insights they’re hoping to gain will be related to the pandemic, they believe it stands to reason that the same type of approach could accelerate care in instances of natural disasters or any unpredictable hospital usage surge.
The pair also want to be sure to include nurses in the discussion, as too often they can be left out while still being a part of the group experiencing the most disruption. Regulatory requirements and anything that could present a patient safety issue obviously can’t be cut, but there’s still a lot of room for efficiencies in both the intake and discharge processes. Change is always a delicate balance with EHR entry processes though.
We encourage healthcare organizations to take a close look at the costs and benefits to the changes they make. Depending on the changes being made, a staggered rollout of process edits could ease clinicians into things or be causing them to have to learn a new EHR layout just as they’ve mastered the previous one.
These experts will be presenting information on their Texas pilot study at the upcoming HIMSS22 conference in March if you’d like to learn more about how they’re trying to identify the priority of EHR inputs to have a more effective crisis documentation plan.
If you’re interested in other ways of reducing clinician burden like delivering information from unstructured documents directly to the EHR, DMS, and/or any other downstream system, please reach out and we’d be happy to set up an introductory call or demonstration of our software.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.