Technology

You love by the sword. You die by the sword. You have a love-hate relationship with the electronic health record. How can physicians begin to tame the beast that has been fed and let loose in the medical industry so they can get back to practicing medicine.

Taming the EHR and its Effect on Burnout

Rick Rosemeier, interviewed by Becker's Health IT and CIO Report, recommends these four efforts to reduce the burden of EHR on frontline physicians.

1) Let physicians personalize the EHR interface. This can be done from the department level all the way down to individual physicians with order sets, customized templates, and landing pages.

2) Train physicians on the EHR, then train them again. Doctors who receive at least 6 hours of training before a go-live date and ongoing training seem to have fewer issues.

3) Align EHR workflows with clinical workflows. Health IT and Operations can no longer be allowed to be separate disciplines. These two departments must work together to create the best experience for physicians to work efficiently.

4) Seek out doctors' needs, wants and concerns. By training, physicians have been taught to put up with less than optimal circumstances and many suffer silently under the weight of poor EHR implementation. Get your IT team out on the floor and listen to what is not work.

Simplify EHR and Desktop Logins for Doctors

 Yale Medicine implemented tools to make it much easier for a physician to login into their workstation and HIPAA compliant Electronic Health Record. It allows physicians to logon with their password traditionally at the beginning of the day, but then as the system automatically locks them out after a period of inactivity, to wave their employee badge to log them back in using RFID technology. Most hospitals already use this for timecards, it should be easy enough to add next to every physician laptop.

Simpler Logins, Voice Recognition Ease Click Fatigue
Save 1 Million Clicks a Day based on Dr. Paul DeChant's recommendations