Health

Three Keys of Sturdy Memorial Hospital to Limit Doctor Burnout



Physician burnout has been a major focus for healthcare delivery organizations since before the pandemic – but the pandemic has exacerbated the problem.

Dr. Brian Patel knows this all too well. Patel is senior vice president of medical affairs, chief medical officer, and chief quality officer at Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro, Massachusetts. And he’s working to stop the doctor burnout problem.

For 2023, he has three key priorities in this regard: addressing violence in the workplace, limiting emergency department use, and choosing the right tools to work smarter, not more. harder. And data and IT health have an important role to play.

Healthcare IT News sat down with Patel to gather strategies to share with executives and clinicians in other hospitals and health systems.

Q. Among your thoughts on helping reduce health worker burnout, you would suggest that healthcare providers tackle workplace violence. Please talk a little bit about the environment and what organizations can do to reduce this problem.

ONE. Even before the pandemic, half of emergency department doctors and 70% of emergency department nurses said they had been hit or kicked while on the job. Now, 85% of ED doctors say they have experienced workplace violence – and 7 out of 10 ED employees say workplace violence is a major cause of burnout.

In 2020, there is an abuse of a healthcare worker every 57 minutes. In 2021, it increases every 49 minutes. By 2022, incidents were increasing every 38 minutes.

Doctors and nurses don’t go into medicine to be yelled at, kicked, bitten or punched by patients.

However, every day, the growing number of patients coupled with the increasing number of inpatient medical and behavioral health patients leads to delays in care, staff shortages and an increase in conditions. contribute to volatility at the point of care that puts their lives and well-being at risk.

And unfortunately, that’s a problem that has worsened throughout the pandemic.

We must invest in the tools needed to predict the likelihood of violence at the point of care, including in ED, based on a patient’s current and past medical history and behavior. Healthcare organizations must also take a firm stance on violence in the workplace – violence backed by action.

This is where Sturdy Memorial Hospital, a 149-bed community hospital that records 50,000 ED visits a year, is in action.

Our approach to real-time threat assessment in ED helps prevent workplace violence before it occurs and generates a more coordinated response. We have formed a Threat Assessment Team with experts from a variety of fields to review cases and develop ways to inform staff about the potential for patient violence when they come to the ED .

This approach is especially valuable in the ED and ICU, where the risk of vulnerability is higher due to the pressures the patient faces and their medical condition.

In addition, we have provided mechanisms for staff to identify patients at risk of abuse in such a way that all members of the care team are aware of this risk whenever they interact. with the patient and can protect themselves accordingly.

We have also partnered with PointClickCare, a healthcare information technology platform provider that integrates with our EHR to better identify patients who are likely to exhibit violent behavior, including including those who have exhibited violent behavior in the past.

The impact has been impressive. Our work has reduced violent clashes in the ED and ICU, and has given employees more confidence that the right precautions are in place to protect themselves and the people they serve. .

Q. You said limiting emergency department use would help reduce burnout. How and how can provider organizations achieve this feat?

ONE. In the midst of a pandemic, one in five patients with a terminal illness struggles to get care, including mental health care. This comes at a time when mental health conditions and severity of symptoms are on the rise and mental health professionals are struggling to keep up with the increase in patient numbers.

Many of these end up in ED, an area of ​​care not designed to treat mental illness — and that jeopardizes the physical and mental health of ED professionals.

In this environment, the pressure to provide care in an emergency setting is increasing. Last year, 47% of doctors said they felt burned out, up 5% since 2020. Meanwhile, a third of nurses plan to quit – and 44% blame burnout and stress. This is the reason why they want to quit their job.

To help ease the burden on ED staff across the country, healthcare organizations must proactively address the complex needs of high ED users, ranging from behavioral health conditions to risk factors. society determines health.

This will take a closely coordinated approach, leveraging data and care collaboration tools. At Sturdy Memorial, a unique approach to identifying heavy ED users with behavioral health conditions, and SDOH reduced ED use by 45% in this population.

By reducing ED use, patients receive the care they need in the right setting, and ED providers feel that the patients they are caring for are actually getting the right care instead of returned to ED several times for the same clinical problem.

A large part of the burnout for providers in this situation is the perception that they cannot provide these patients with the definitive care they need which causes them to return to the ED over and over again, which leads to to increased frustration for the patient as well as the care team.

To address ED usage, we started by leveraging real-time notifications fed directly into the EHR to quickly identify behavioral health patients with more than three ED visits in the past six months , including at other hospitals.

Once these patients are flagged, our team coordinates efforts with the local behavioral health provider, Bristol County Community Counselor, to assign the patient to an administrator. Dedicated case manager with behavioral health expertise. From there, patients are connected to outpatient programs that can help address their mental health needs.

Case managers also work to identify and address SDOH factors – such as homelessness and traffic barriers – that often contribute to high ED use.

Today, non-essential ED use by individuals with behavioral health challenges managed through this program is still 44% lower than it was during the six-month period before joining the program. And, because the program also addresses SDOH, patients not only get better care, but they also have access to resources that help meet their entire health needs, from healthy foods to treatments. transportation or safe haven.

Q. You said successful care teams in 2023 will continue to leverage the right tools to be smarter with the limited staffing they have – this includes health IT tools . What is needed, where should supply organizations invest?

ONE. Doctors and care teams are stretched like never before. In 2022, the American Hospital Association called the workforce shortage a “national emergency,” forecasting the overall nurse shortage to reach 1.1 million by the end of 2022. .

Meanwhile, 46% of nurses say they are being floated or reassigned to other clinical care units without receiving the education they need to prepare. It is a situation that creates unsafe working conditions for doctors and clinicians and an unsafe care environment for patients and their families.

In 2023, successful care teams will continue to leverage the right tools to work smarter with the limited staff they have. This includes health IT tools that leverage data to provide helpful insights at the point of care – allowing existing staff to make more informed decisions about the best course of action for the patient. their personnel.

In addition, investing in tools that help better improve effective, easily accessible healthcare information at care locations, independent of each organization’s EHR platform, will enable care Timely, better-coordinated patient care with fewer human resources.

The use of IT tools to improve care coordination and innovative solutions to address social determinants of health will help reduce ED use, readmissions and length of hospital stay – All of which help improve patient care with less staffing needed.

Tools that enable meaningful collaboration and access to real-time insights at any stage of a patient’s healthcare journey – such as an ADT-based care collaboration network that can the ability to provide real-time alerts about patient vulnerabilities – improving quality of care.

They also improve patient outcomes while providing staff with the insights needed to support safer, more efficient care visits. By 2023, leading organizations will rely on these types of tools to deliver smarter care with limited staff while protecting the health of team members.

Follow Bill’s HIT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email the writer: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.

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