Reduce Physician Burnout by Addressing Usability and Interoperability Says CMA President

All around the globe, healthcare systems are beginning to strain and fray as physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals leave their positions or scale back their hours. There is no silver bullet. Restoring our health systems and re-energizing staff is going to require change and improvement on many fronts. Technology can help, but only if it reduces the administrative burden. Dr. Katharine Smart, President of the Canadian Medical Association believes interoperability is key to reducing physician burnout.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Dr. Smart at a recent conference in Toronto to discuss the healthcare workforce crisis and how Health IT can help.

Worrying Trend

“Physicians are absolutely experiencing burnout at double the rate before the pandemic, it’s now over 50% of physicians and extends to nurses and other healthcare professionals,” stated Dr. Smart. “It’s really worrisome. We are in a situation where we have problems with access and not enough staff. That’s not where we want to be.”

Recently, there have been noticeable signs of the healthcare workforce crisis. In Canada headlines are starting to appear around local Emergency Departments reducing their hours due to a shortage of staff. The same is happening in Europe.

Technology Can Help

“One of the biggest causes of burnout, especially for family doctors is administrative burdens,” shared Dr. Smart. “And a lot of that comes from electronic medical records. An EMR is supposed to make your life easier and there are really powerful things about EMRs, but inadvertently they have actually increased the amount of time physicians spend on paperwork.”

Dr. Smart believes that vendors need put more effort into partnering with physicians and physician organizations to improve EMR technologies. She also believes that improving interoperability will help reduce the burden on physicians and nurses.

“Our decisions [as physicians] are only as good as the information we have and when we don’t have all the patient’s information, that’s a risk,” explained Dr. Smart. If health data were more interoperable and shared more freely, then there would be a reduction of unnecessary tests. Instead of physicians ordering tests that patients had already taken elsewhere, a record of it would already exist and be seen by the physician. Less tests means less paperwork.

As well, there would no longer be a burden on staff to fax (yes fax) information to a patient’s other specialists.

Dr. Smart also singled out virtual care and telehealth as technologies that could help during the staffing crisis. If there were insufficient resources in a one region then doctors from another region could step in, virtually, to help provide access until local staffing returned to normal.

“Our challenge is how do we move from talking to actually doing something about the problem,” said Dr. Smart. “In this unique moment, as we are moving though the pandemic, there is an opportunity for people to be more open to doing things differently.”

Watch the full interview with Dr. Katharine Smart:

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

Categories