The following is a guest article by Jon Zimmerman, CEO at Holon Solutions
In today’s healthcare landscape, clinical information systems are valuable tools for coordinating care and improving outcomes. However, as healthcare workers have discovered time and time again, these technologies are not always optimally user-friendly, nor are they built for today’s complex world. Fundamentally, most of these different systems just don’t work well together.
When providers struggle to use their existing technologies while having to incorporate information from disconnected systems, it stands to reason that patients and payers are also affected. As it turns out, this is exactly what is happening. This is why it’s so important for healthcare systems to select care technology solutions that are built and deployed with empathy for all stakeholders: providers, patients, and payers alike.
Where Empathetic Technology can Help Solve Burnout for Providers
Burnout is affecting clinicians at an unprecedented rate, and overly complex administrative tasks are partly to blame. Even in the aftermath of the pandemic, many clinicians still can’t quite get ahead of the overwhelming backlogs and stresses in their daily practice. In the last few years, nearly 20 percent of healthcare workers have left their roles due to feeling overworked and experiencing limited opportunities to engage in meaningful patient care. There could be dire consequences for patients if this trend continues.
Providers should not have to spend their precious time on paperwork and other administrative tasks that take away from their time with patients. But unfortunately, that’s the case these days. Studies show that for every one hour spent directly caring for patients, physicians spend two hours on their EHR and other administrative tasks.
This can lead many clinicians to spend more than six hours per week on EHR tasks, outside of their traditional working hours. This situation is fundamentally unacceptable; the healthcare system can do better for its workers. Providers are simply being asked to do too much with too little. Healthcare leaders need to take a proactive, empathetic approach to alleviate burnout and reduce the administrative burdens that cause it. That’s where technology comes into play.
Intelligent, empathetic technology can be used to understand and enhance the clinical experience for everyone involved in healthcare, from patients to payers. The right blend of technology can increase effective, convenient sharing of information between clinical systems and automate administrative tasks, such as data entry and documentation, to free up time for providers to focus on patient care. This can lead to better work-life balance and reduce the likelihood of burnout.
How Empathetic Technology can Improve Patient Experience
Patients are at the center of the healthcare industry, and using technology that showcases empathy for the people who care for them should be a priority for healthcare systems. When providers use an intelligent platform that connects relevant patient data together in one place, they can deliver more comprehensive and empathetic care to patients in every moment.
Smarter information sharing among clinical and population health systems can also help providers give patients easier access to their medical records, test results and other important information. This helps patients become more engaged in their own care, which can lead to better outcomes.
In addition to improving the patient health experience, care technology designed with empathy for care teams can also enhance patient safety. Preventable medication errors can lead to serious consequences for patients, and the right blend of technologies can help to prevent them. By incorporating medication reconciliation tools and medication management systems, care teams can ensure that patients receive the right medication when they need it, reducing the likelihood of adverse drug events.
The right blend of technology can help providers deliver more comprehensive and empathetic care, enhance patient safety, improve accessibility and even protect patient privacy and security. By prioritizing the needs and experiences of providers for patients in selecting new care technology, healthcare systems can move toward a more collaborative, patient-centered and compassionate future.
Revolutionizing Payer-Provider Relationships with Empathetic Technology
Payers play a crucial role in healthcare by providing coverage and critical information for medical services. They are an essential stakeholder in the healthcare industry, and technology has a significant impact on their experience as well. In addition to providers and patients, payers also face challenges in navigating the complex healthcare landscape.
The current healthcare system is rife with administrative inefficiencies and redundancies, which can lead to delayed or denied payments for payers. Payers have to manage complex payment systems, track performance, and ensure regulatory compliance. The lack of smart information sharing among clinical information systems can also create obstacles for payers in accessing necessary patient information to process claims and authorize care.
To address these challenges, healthcare systems need to seriously consider the payer experience when choosing care technologies. For their own benefit, they can prioritize intuitive, intelligent information-sharing platforms that facilitate streamlined, coordinated communication between payers and providers. Empathetic technology prioritizes the needs of providers aligned with payers by automating processes, minimizing administrative tasks and providing real-time visibility into administrative tasks and status.
For example, an intelligent, empathetic prior authorization application can help care teams check payer requirements to determine if prior authorization is even needed, then easily manage the authorization for them without leaving the workflow. This intelligent, assistive approach eliminates manual back-and-forth communication between providers and payers, reducing administrative burdens for both parties.
Selecting technology built with empathy for all stakeholders can help healthcare organizations create a more connected, collaborative, and efficient healthcare system. By focusing on the needs of providers, patients and payers alike, healthcare organizations can create more value for everyone involved.
Closing Thoughts
Technology has revolutionized the healthcare industry, but has not kept pace with the dynamic ecosystem of systems. The implementation of clinical and population information systems has improved the overall quality of care, but disconnected technologies have also created new and unbearable administrative burdens for providers and other stakeholders.
The key to overcoming these challenges is assistive technology that is fundamentally designed with empathy for all stakeholders. Healthcare organizations must prioritize the needs of providers, patients, and payers by choosing intelligent, intuitive, and assistive information-sharing systems that streamline and/or automate workflows, communications, and processes. By doing so, healthcare organizations can reduce provider burnout and improve the patient experience while enhancing the payer experience.
Innovative companies are leading the charge in designing empathetic healthcare technology. Intelligent tools can relieve burden while enhancing revenue opportunities for organizations and support success with value-based care and other patient-centered initiatives. The right blend of technology can even provide a network of support and insight around care teams and their patients, ensuring that enterprises can make the most of existing systems while optimizing their technology tools to maximize results and realize value for all.
The healthcare industry is constantly evolving, and finding the right blend of technology will continue to play a critical role in shaping its future. By making the choice to prioritize technology that’s designed with empathy for all stakeholders, healthcare organizations can efficiently and sustainably create a more provider-supportive and patient-centered healthcare system.
About Jon Zimmerman
As CEO of Holon Solutions, Jon sets the overall strategic direction for the company. By engaging providers, payers, communities, and partners across Holon’s CollaborNet® platform, he focuses on improving operational efficiency, care quality, and the provider experience by delivering relevant patient knowledge when and where providers need it.
An industry leader, Jon’s career spans more than 35 years with a majority spent in healthcare engaging and serving providers and payers with companies such as IBM, Siemens, CareFusion, Allscripts, Availity and GE. Prior to joining Holon, Jon served as President of Virence Health, which was acquired from GE by Veritas Capital and is now part of athenahealth. While at GE he led the turnaround of the value-based care solutions portfolio. He also initiated and drove the sale/divestiture of the division.
An active industry leader, Jon serves as a member of the HL7 Industry Advisory Council, co-chair of the WEDI Administrative Automation Task Group, and Board member with the American Academy for the Advancement of Home Care Medicine.
His background also includes the pioneering formation of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for healthcare in the late 1980s and community health interchanges in the late 1990s. In 2014, he received the Louis J. Sullivan Award from the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), recognizing his continuing efforts to advance the efficiency of healthcare. He also holds a patent on advanced revenue cycle management.
Jon earned his Bachelor of Arts in Literature from West Chester University.
