There’s been a five percentage-point increase in physician burnout in 2021, according to Medscape’s Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2022: Stress, Anxiety and Anger. Forty-seven percent of clinicians reported being burnt out in 2021, with ER physician burnout increasing from 43 to 60 percent. Additionally, most physicians reported burnout spilling over from their work life into homelife, with 54 percent saying the stress is severe enough to impact relationships.
As healthcare continues to shift towards a more digital-first approach, technology that supports clinicians is crucial for longevity, revenue, and patient retention. And at Bright.md, we know the importance of bettering the care experience for all, which is why clinical decision support is core to our solution—so we can effectively help clinicians gain support and relief from unnecessary burden.
What is clinical decision support?
Clinical decision support tools improve provider efficiency by automating administrative tasks and integrating seamlessly into existing workflows, including EHRs, prescription fulfillment tools, billing, and more. The goal of clinical decision support in our eyes? To alleviate the administrative burden that’s part of delivering care while maintaining provider autonomy—all so providers can spend more time with patients who need them most, and less time doing paperwork.
Clinical decision support is particularly crucial for virtual care platforms, since many solutions in the market have instead added to providers’ inefficiencies. In fact, in one recent study,
At Bright.md, we automate both the clinical patient interview and the clinician documentation for every asynchronous telehealth encounter. Bright.md’s clinical decision support provides a recommended diagnosis and treatment plan based on evidence-based guidelines, along with a SOAP formatted chart-note logged as an encounter in your EHR—allowing providers efficiency while preserving autonomy and clinical judgment.
“By collecting the patient’s history digitally, asynchronous care allows providers to focus on medical decision-making rather than data gathering and documentation, optimizing skill-task alignment,” wrote Bright.md’s Medical Director Dr. Christina Chen, in a recent piece for KevinMD.com. “What further sets Bright.md apart is that we take on the responsibility of creating, maintaining, and updating all of the clinical content. This means ensuring that everything remains evidence-based and consistent with clinical protocols so that health systems and their providers don’t have to.”
Why is clinical decision support critical for the future of care delivery?
Check out five ways clinical decision support, through an asynchronous telehealth solution like Bright.md, can help improve healthcare delivery.
- More patient personalization. For patients to get to the right venue of care for their symptoms the first time, your tech of choice needs to direct them appropriately. With Bright.md’s Navigate solution, patients are asked one question to guide them to the recommended care option that is best for their needs. For low-acuity common conditions, it determines if they can receive care asynchronously or in-person—and with Bright.md, this is more than just a “stock” interview.
Instead, Bright.md’s interview flow mimics the history-taking conversation that happens in a face-to-face interaction between a patient and provider, essentially making it more personalized. Our solution has logic built in that allows for every patient path to be unique and dynamic, based on how they answer questions. - Less clinical burden on providers. Today’s clinicians spend an incredible amount of time on administrative tasks. With Bright.md, once a patient completes their interview, the platform uses that information to automatically generate a chart note for the provider to review. Additionally, the chart note integrates directly into an EHR and includes all the necessary information for clinical decision-making. Clinicians receive a thorough history of present illness report, along with self-guided physical exam components, current medications and allergies, a medication contraindication review, and more.
Bright.md also presents the provider with a most-likely diagnosis based on the patient’s interview responses, as well as the evidence-based treatment options for that diagnosis. The provider is free to change that diagnosis as they see fit, and if they do, the evidence-based treatment options will change as well. Once the provider has chosen the appropriate diagnosis and treatment plan, they simply sign the chart note and care is delivered—no further documentation or follow-up is required. In turn, clinicians have more time to spend with patients with more complex conditions–helping to improve overall outcomes, while driving efficiencies. - Built-in consistency. Bright.md’s clinical content has been honed and vetted over eight years and has been used to provide quality care to hundreds of thousands of patients. The content has been peer-reviewed by dozens of clinicians at our customer organizations, including leading health systems throughout the country.
Bright.md is able to gather just as comprehensive—if not more comprehensive—patient history than what’s gathered in direct patient-provider interactions. This is done through the platform’s consistent and thorough clinical interviews that are evidence-based and dynamically changing based on the patient’s responses. By automating the documentation process and presenting just the evidence-based treatment options for a particular diagnosis, Bright.md enables providers to deliver care that’s consistent and often exceeds national quality standards, while also maintaining provider autonomy.
“This experience was amazing. My visit summary contained more explanation for why I was prescribed each medication and the thought that went behind my care than I have ever received before. I’ve told everyone I know about this service… Even though I didn’t talk to a provider in-person or [on] video this feels like the most personalized treatment I’ve ever received.” – Bright.md patient user
- Guaranteed clinical adherence. The resources used to create and maintain Bright.md’s clinical content are trusted for their rigor and adherence to evidence-based practice guidelines and includes clinical practice guidelines from professional medical societies, validated screening tools, proven clinical decision rules, recommendations from organizations like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and online medical compendiums like UpToDate. “Now with that said, we recognize medicine is constantly evolving—so we ensure our clinical content is relevant and up-to-date with internal processes like protocol/guideline monitoring, clinical updates, analytics review, and vetting of clinician feedback,” said Bright.md’s Medical Director, Dr. Christina Chen.
- Lower cost of care. The clinical content within Bright.md’s asynchronous telehealth solution allows providers to practice at the top of their license, efficiently providing high-quality care in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Providers using the platform deliver care for low-acuity, episodic conditions in an average of 3.5 minutes per patient. Patients, in turn, are only waiting six minutes on average between the time they submit their interview responses to when they receive their diagnosis and treatment plan. Together, these numbers have huge implications for improving patient satisfaction, increasing patient retention, improving access to care, reducing provider burnout, and driving cost savings for the health system.
