Look around at the state of modern healthcare, and what do you see? Many researchers have found – and many professionals on the ground will anecdotally agree – that the rate of provider burnout is soaring as clinician workloads swell. The Covid-19 pandemic aside, there are several contributing factors:
- On average, physicians have 15-20 patient care questions a day
- Up to 60% of those questions go unanswered
- That means 5-8 patient management decisions per physician are impacted daily from the exponential growth of clinical research and the lack of reliable resources to help clinicians keep up
- Medication errors are also a grave concern, causing at least one death a day and injuring 1.3 million people every year in the U.S. alone
These additional stresses weigh heavily on care teams who are trying to align best care practices and the latest medical information with their already demanding schedules and the administrative and financial challenges of their organization.
Accessing the latest clinical information for better outcomes
To avoid provider burnout, clinicians need to know they have access to informational resources that are reliable and based on clinical evidence and best practices. When clinicians can quickly and easily locate information on a range of clinical topics to answer their patient care and medication questions, it makes their jobs easier. And that helps to reduce the risk of provider burnout and improve clinician satisfaction.
Integrated, evidence-based CDSS tools can eliminate variability across the patient journey, reduce diagnostic and treatment errors, and lower unnecessary costs.
Misinformation leads to inconsistent care and poor patient outcomes. In the U.S., $750 billion is wasted every year due to unnecessary and inefficient services.
CDSS can help with provider burnout
Given that care teams in U.S. healthcare facilities already use electronic systems consistently every day, investing in the right CDSS can provide aligned, consistent decision making, standardizing the delivery of care, and improving patient outcomes.
But simply adding in another decision support tool isn’t enough. Too many tools can encumber a clinician’s workflow, introducing unnecessary tasks for clinicians, increasing the number of invasive clinical alerts, and compounding the causes of provider burnout.
Choosing the right tools to support providers
The key is implementing strategic decision support tools that offer value to clinicians by creating efficiency, and enhancing patient safety and provider-patient interactions, rather than adding extraneous steps to their process. Look for solutions that:
- Contain the most relevant, up-to-date information
- Provide the right information, at the right time in the clinician workflow
- Simplify the clinician workflow by being easy to use
- Foster consistency of information across the continuum of care
To learn more about clinical decision support solutions (CDSS) for care teams, check out our “The Best Medicine” eBook.
