Staffing Shortages, Limited Access, and Provider Burnout…Oh My!

Dec 1

by Christina Onolaja, MHA

Staffing, access, and burnout are like four-letter words in most healthcare settings these days. There aren’t enough people to perform the tasks needed to keep patients flowing through the system or enough providers entering the industry to keep up with the demand resulting in limited access for patients in need of care. This is particularly challenging for primary care given it is the gatekeeper for a patient’s total health. Access to primary care is limited and it is even more limited in specialty settings.

PCPs are left to dive deeper into diagnosing and treating illnesses they would typically refer to specialists which is time-consuming and further limits access to care. Given these challenges, healthcare leaders are looking more to technology to support patient flow and administrative and clinical functions with hopes of maintaining access for patients and reducing burnout for providers while still providing high-quality healthcare.

One of the first things an organization should do when evaluating streamlining workflows to reduce the burden on staff members is to look at how effectively they are utilizing their electronic health record (EHR). In some cases, once the system was set up during implementation, the settings remain the same even though the system may have evolved. Leaders should talk to their teams to understand what their greatest challenges are and discuss them with their EHR vendor to determine if there are built-in options before exploring third-party applications.

For example, the schedule template determines the flow of the day for a PCP. Seeing back-to-back complex patients is tiring because of the documentation required for these visits. If the template does not allow adequate time to complete the visit and the subsequent documentation, the provider will run behind leaving them to document in the evening, and patients upset because their appointment did not start on time. Working with providers to understand the appropriate amount of time needed for certain types of visits and blocking templates accordingly can significantly impact the flow of their day and reduce patient frustration.

In The Business of Primary Care article, Support Staff Shortages In Healthcare: The Role of Smart Software and the Spoils of Pre-Visit Planning, pre-visit planning is discussed as a helpful way to prepare a chart and streamline the patient visit. This is another way organizations can optimize their EHR to ensure data is complete in the chart and easily accessible by the provider during the visit. The challenge is ensuring the staff are available to do this despite people shortages but with the number of job seekers looking for work-from-home positions, this is a way to engage with that population and support the flow of the office.

If the EHR is optimized and there are still significant pain points, it might be time to consider third-party applications. Some key areas to evaluate include patient registration and self-service options, clinical documentation, coding, and population health. There are a number of artificial intelligence options focused on using data entered into the EHR to streamline and automate workflows from sending appointment reminders to automatically choosing the correct billing code based on clinical documentation.

Next week, we will look at some of the key areas where technology can relieve some of the pain when a practice is short-staffed and reduce the administrative burden for providers and clinical staff. This will include online scheduling, patient pre-registration solutions, patient portals, and huddle reports.