ntinai/Dentist
By Melissa LuVisi
Chief Strategy Officer, tab32
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I had just wrapped up a pitch with a 50-practice dental group when my husband texted: "This EHR is awesome." He was in the second day of training for his new job at one of the largest medical groups in the country after leaving a career working as a family medicine doctor at smaller clinics. The career shift had been tough; a part of him felt like he was selling out. But, after having our son, we knew he couldn't keep skipping lunch and staying late at work just to complete his notes in an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that was constantly failing. Sure enough, his first week on his new job he was home for dinner for the first time in months. In the subsequent days to follow, he would share how the new EHR had been built for efficiency and truly was improving his experience.
As the Chief Strategy Officer of a dental software company that deals with EHRs, there isn't a day that passes without my hearing about client staffing issues. While there are a number of factors contributing to this trend, the most common complaints come from staff who are tired of using poorly designed EHR systems, which typically rely on server-based technology that doesn't move fast enough, requires too many clicks and breaks down often.
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For every minute spent with a patient, healthcare workers must spend several additional minutes inputting data on a computer. When these systems aren't intuitive, they can cause delays in care, frustrating healthcare workers who are often already dealing with outsized demand. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that burnout is closely linked to how easy EHRs are to use. In fact, each one-point drop in EHR usability led to 2% higher odds of burnout for the people using these systems.
The World Health Organization defines burnout as "a syndrome" caused by "chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." With many healthcare systems and dental providers using antiquated or poorly designed EHRs, burnout is on the rise.
Badly Designed EHR Systems Are Increasing Workloads
The purpose of medical records has expanded tremendously in the past several decades. While EHRs were once primarily employed for ensuring continuity of care, these systems are now used to prevent malpractice, relay information to state regulatory agencies, and aid with billing. These important tasks help keep patients and providers safe and can even support research, but also take time. Many EHR systems aren't designed to keep up with these changing needs, placing the burden on medical teams to adapt to EHR systems, rather than the reverse.
When systems aren't user-friendly or efficient, healthcare workers waste valuable time. In some cases, the sheer number of clicks required to complete many of these necessary tasks causes tremendous frustration and eventual burnout. This issue can often be solved through better tech designs.
Poor Usability Is Impacting Care
When EHR systems hinder healthcare workers' ability to do their jobs, both patients and providers pay the price. Outdated or poorly designed systems sometimes result in staff duplicating efforts, which takes away from time they could be spending treating patients. While many major EHR system companies are becoming more user-friendly, many still lack customization and basic functionality. In the dental industry, a lack of continuity across providers using EHRs means workers often must learn new systems at every new job, delaying onboarding.
The solution isn't as simple as offering endless customization, however, as too many options can inhibit teams from creating clear, mimicable workflows. EHR designers instead must carefully consider how systems can integrate into existing teams' workflows, how long it will take workers to fill out documentation, and how logical or intuitive systems are. The best way to truly understand functionality for EHR systems is to talk to the people who use them most.
Designers Must Seek Feedback From Healthcare Workers
Organizations that invest in upgrades to improve the EHR experience for their clinical staff are likely to have happier staff and better outcomes for patient-centered care. However, EHR designers must speak with healthcare workers and be proactive about collecting feedback from people at every tier of the team.
In speaking with dental and healthcare workers, I've also learned that it's important that the staff who utilize these systems must be involved in testing these products, evaluating their efficacy, and helping to design them. Resentment and frustration can more easily brew when healthcare workers are forced to utilize systems they had no say in and cannot provide feedback on.
Healthcare workers consulting on design must also be adequately compensated for providing feedback. Otherwise, we run the risk of adding yet another unpaid task to an already overwhelming job. Improving the usability of EHR systems and reducing healthcare worker burnout will require active partnership between technology companies, healthcare administrators, and healthcare workers at every level.
The Potential Of Well-Designed EHRs
While many EHR systems are creating unnecessary work for healthcare workers, the right technology has the potential to help teams reduce the amount of time spent on menial tasks, allowing providers to focus more on treating patients. Well-designed tech can automate certain workflows so that healthcare workers have more time to focus on tasks that require a human element — such as building trust with patients. For tech companies and healthcare systems to do this correctly, true collaboration is necessary, and healthcare workers must have a seat at the design table.
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