As health systems continue to deal with workforce shortages, many leaders are turning to technology to try to alleviate some of the burdens on their existing staff.
The Guthrie Clinic, based in Sayre, Pa., created a virtual care command center, dubbed the Pulse Center, that mixes the use of technology and people to supplement its nursing staff and assist them with clinical care.
The Pulse Center hosts a team of registered nurses that virtually support the health system's five campuses. According to Guthrie, the initiative has helped supplement its nursing workforce.
"We know that we can't continue to practice the way we are today. There's just not going to be enough hands even if we could afford it," Terri Couts, RN, chief digital officer of Guthrie, told Becker's. "And so adding technology enables us to care for patients differently and reach them where they want to be reached, whether it's at home, in a different facility, or through home health."
Another way health systems are trying to retain their workforces is by making everyday tasks such as EHR documentation easier for their clinicians.
Honolulu-based Hawaii Pacific Health found that its staff spent 1,700 nursing hours per month on documenting within the EHR. This prompted the hospital to implement a new initiative dubbed "Get Rid of Stupid Stuff" that aimed to create simple fixes to tasks within the EHR that clinicians felt were poorly designed, unnecessary or nonsensical.
The initiative, implemented in 2017, started by getting staff to write down anything within the EHR that was taxing, and in the end, Hawaii Pacific received 200 suggestions.
The suggestions were worked on by two teams — the "Get Rid of Stupid Stuff" team and the EHR working groups. The EHR working groups handled more complex fixes to the EHR while the "stupid stuff" team handled simple fixes.
The initiative resulted in saving staff at Hawaii Pacific thousands of hours.
The University of Kansas Health System also turned to technology to reduce documentation time. Using AI technology from Abridge, the Kansas City-based health system staff used the tool to record physicians' conversations with patients and summarize their treatment plans, reasons for the visit and medical history.
This cut down documentation time from five hours to one.
According to a July 20 study published in JAMIA, higher levels of EHR stress are associated with higher levels of burnout among physicians in all specialties.