Challenges in Physician Workflow: While physician workflows have generally evolved to benefit patients and providers, unexpected challenges—such as excessive time on EMRs versus patient interaction—contribute to burnout and inefficiency.
Streamlining and Collaboration: EMRs often prioritize compliance and hospital revenue over physician ease of use. Tools like Phrasefire aim to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and facilitate collaboration within and outside EMRs, saving significant time and improving patient care.
Broad Benefits: Enhancing workflow efficiency reduces physician burnout, decreases errors, and improves patient outcomes. Hospitals can save over $900 per physician per error annually, making these solutions both a medical and economic imperative.
Over time, the physician workflow has changed in ways that generally benefit both patients and healthcare providers. Yet, some unexpected workflow challenges have come along with that. If we are serious about addressing physician burnout, It’s crucial to evaluate and adjust these processes.
Our prior post discussed the imbalance of time spent on computers vs patients. Here’s another study highlighting the issue with physician time spent with computer screens vs actual patients. Residents in this study spent >50% of the shift doing computer work compared to 9.4% of the time interacting with patients.
Many things need to be done to fix this issue. One of them is streamlining the physician workflow and making it easier to share workflow information between users. Streamlining the physician workflow allows us to focus more on patient care and less on EMR keystrokes. The thing about EMRs is they are not designed primarily to make the physician’s workflow easier or more efficient. After 10 years of using the most prevalent EMR in the US, I note the following about priorities of design:
The EMR is designed primarily to improve compliance of the system.
The physician workflow has been expanded to incorporate additional lucrative tasks for the hospital system.
Then the physician ease of use is considered.
Phrasefire was born out of a desire to improve this situation. Frankly, over time I was getting tired of the constant clicking and each EMR update reset the environment slightly so that muscle memory had to be adjusted. Something needed to be done to streamline my own workflow and reduce error.
Our platform allows widespread sharing and collaboration among medical teams within and outside of EMRs. With reduced electronic workflow burden and better communication, burden of work on the physician decreases. In turn the risk of errors decreases, creating a safer environment for patients. We are focused on small improvements but they add up over time. Just 20 minutes saved per patient encounter amounts to almost 3 days saved every year.
The impact of an improvement to the burnout problem goes beyond individual physicians. Hospitals and healthcare systems stand to benefit financially. Studies estimate that reducing medical errors could save over $900 annually per error per physician, making these tools not just a medical necessity but a sound economic investment.
For patients, this means better care, fewer complications, and greater peace of mind. As healthcare continues to evolve, prioritizing physician efficiency isn’t just about innovation—it’s about clearly defining how we value the well-being of both doctors and their patients. The two are ultimately intimately intertwined.
check us out at http://www.phrasefire.com