Physician Burnout - EMR Shaming Has to STOP

Every time I survey a group of physicians asking, "What are the top three stressors in your practice day?" ... EMR and other documentation issues ALWAYS make the list. This is true regardless of specialty without exception. 

EMR is a slave to Big Data, designed by people who have never seen a patient and it is a huge cause of physician burnout in a significant number of doctors.

AND we can do a MUCH better job of helping our physicians clear the EMR hurdle in their day if we STOP SHAMING the people who struggle the most.

Here is a common practice scenario for a burned out physician who comes to us for coaching.

Prevent Physician Burnout with our five-part EMR & Documentation Strategy - Video Training

Any time you survey physicians on the workplace stresses that are causing physician burnout - EMR / EHR and documentation chores (Patient Portal, InBox/Basket) will be listed as one of the top three stressors. This happens for obvious reasons.

 

1) You were taught to diagnose and treat disease and take care of patients - not hunt and peck at a keyboard. You were never meant to be a master of data entry and fancy keystrokes, but somehow this has become a critically important aspect of your job. 

2) You think EMR is a Problem. It is not. It is another example of a Dilemma. Watch this video first to understand this fundamental distinction.

What you need is a Strategy to deal with your own personal EMR and Documentation challenges.

Watch the following video for our five-part EMR Strategy.

Implement any one of these this week and you will be getting home sooner before the weekend.

 

 

 

 

EMR Power Training

Two ways to consistently lower you TITO week to week

TITO = Time In The Office

How can you build an office day where you spend more face time with your patients than keyboard time with your EMR?

Too often I speak with physicians who are spending hours after the last patient on EMR documentation and - tragically - even more hours grinding away at the keyboard from home after they tuck the kids into bed. If that feels familiar to you, I promise it does not have to be that way.

Here are two ways to start permanently lowering your own personal TITO week after week by cutting down the amount of time you spend typing into your EMR. These are two pieces of a comprehensive strategy to address the dilemma of EMR.

EHR Implementation Struggles and 3 Ways to Do It Well

In this article, I will share three important concepts that will take a lot of the struggle out of your EHR implementation. Each one of these are simple to implement and produce immediate results.

Let's face it ... doctors don't like documentation requirements no matter what form they take. Remember back to the days of paper charts for a moment ... you hated those too ... piles of them on your desk and sometimes on the office floor ... reminding you of the visits you still needed to remember and document.

The Electronic Health Record takes away the piles ... and puts a whole bunch of new stresses on us to keep our charts complete. Are things worse than in the days of paper? A significant number of physicians say yes

Here is what a recent AmericanEHR survey learned in 2012

Medical Records Quality Worst with Physician Dictation

As I work with over stressed and burned out doctors … one of the most common causes of frustration is the documentation of medical records. It does not matter what system is used, most doctors see their medical records system as a drain and wast of time.