Provider burnout, disengagement, clinician shortages. A recent survey found that these are the largest disruptors healthcare systems and the executives who run them will face in 2021. While the global pandemic has changed a lot of things about how patients want care, one thing that hasn’t changed is the toll on clinicians.
While the ability to deliver care remotely purports to offer more freedom and flexibility to providers, the increase in telehealth usage has, in many cases, added to the administrative burden many physicians cite as a primary cause of burnout. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has delivered care via video visit over the past year: care delivered via video takes as much time and effort–if not more–than an in-person visit does.
With more options for care must come digital tools that drive efficiencies in care delivery. A virtual care platform that automates patient intake, clinical workflows, and administrative tasks can help doctors focus on delivering care by freeing up their time to put their relationship with the patient front and center.
“How do we take our most precious resource–our providers–and allow them to do what they’re uniquely qualified to do? Not being IT support or gathering med information or other things like that. They didn’t go to medical school to document information.”
Ries Robinson, Chief Innovation Officer, Presbyterian Healthcare Services
To see this bright future, first we must take a look at where we stand today. In a typical 20-minute visit, whether it’s in-person or on video, a physician spends the majority of the time collecting information about the patient’s health history, medications, current condition, and then, once care is delivered, updating the EHR.
What if, instead, the patient was guided through an online, dynamic clinical interview and the information they provided was automatically turned into a SOAP-ready chart note, ready for review by the provider? What if you could place that process in front of every kind of care encounter–remote, in-person, or asynchronous?
In this scenario, doctors could provide treatment for hundreds of low-acuity conditions in two minutes or less. If the patient’s condition warranted a video or in-person visit, the detailed chart note allows the doctor to focus on the patient rather than collecting data and endlessly clicking buttons in the EHR. Every patient encounter is not only more productive, it is more human. Doctors are empowered with the digital tools that allow them to do what they went into medicine to do: improve the health outcomes of patients.
This is exactly how the Bright.md platform works. It guides patients through a simple, clinical interview to collect their symptoms and preferences, navigates them to the most appropriate level of care, and synthesizes their health history, medications, and current complaints into actionable notes for providers.
The patient-provider relationship remains the heart of the healthcare experience. Tools that automate the busy work and streamline workflows give providers more time with their patients, allow them to practice at the top of their license, and rediscover the joy of medicine.
