How Your Data Disconnect and Patient Care Are Related
Burnout at work is common in many different professional fields and healthcare is no stranger to that term. In the 2018 Medscape National Physician Burnout and Depression survey, 42 percent of respondents had reported feeling ‘burned out.’ Burnout and employee retention correlation is more obvious, what is less obvious is the link between burnout and patient safety. A recent JAMA study found that there is a strong correlation between burnout and patent safety.
With there being several reasons why healthcare providers might be facing fatigue and employee disconnect, one factor remains consistent across surveys, and that is EHR frustrations.
Alexia Gillen, who is a family medicine provider at Regional Health in Rapid City, South Dakota, explained that most of the EHR-related frustrations stems from lack of consistent and accurate data within their EHR system. “If a provider doesn’t have accurate data in a patient’s chart, they really have to struggle to be able to give accurate and appropriate care,” she explained. “It slows us down. It sets us up where we are more likely to repeat tests. And it increases the risk for error.”
Healthcare organizations are heavily relying on electronic migration methods to push and pull data to where it needs to be. The data needs to be captured in the correct way so physicians can access it quickly and make clinical decisions based off of that information.
Jonathan French, who is the Senior Director of Health Information Systems for Quality and Patient Safety Initiatives at HIMSS, explained that, too often, data simply isn’t ported to where it needs to be. “If the EHR is not properly configured or if the provider does not leverage structured data fields during the patient encounter, data accuracy is impacted,” he said. “Inaccurate data can lead to redundant testing and potential threats to patient safety.”
The issue of inaccurate data can lead to a lack of trust between the provider and the EHR system in place. Gillen also explained that this can lead to employee burnout because, “[i]f providers have to spend their time data mining, looking through different records, trying to find what should have been extracted and put in the right place beforehand, it increases the time of visit with the patient.”
Here at Extract, we ensure that your patients’ medical information is entered accurately into an EHR in a timely manner. Our software reads your incoming documents like a human would, and quickly pulls relevant data to be added to a patient’s chart. We can also use your existing database to cross-reference medical record numbers and other pieces of information to ensure that the correct data is going into the correct patient’s record.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can ensure that the data your healthcare system is in the EMR quickly, is accurate, and that it’s in the right place, reach out to us today and we’d be happy to give you an overview or demo of our software.
