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Digital Technology – a Driving Force for Hospitals in Maintaining Patient Satisfaction

If there is one positive thing about the modern day’s digital revolution, and there is more than one, it is that the new and emerging innovative digital technologies are intended to improve the lives of all who utilize them. Throughout recent years, new digital technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have made their way through various different global industries such as manufacturing, media and entertainment, retail, and healthcare. While these new and innovative technologies have begun to greatly influence a more efficient digitized workflow across all industries, healthcare aims to achieve the goal of improving patient satisfaction, engagement, outreach, and access.

Achieving Successful Patient Outreach

Patients who are actively engaged in their healthcare tend to experience greater satisfaction than those who aren’t. The introduction of digital technology to the healthcare space has given patients greater access and allows them to feel more in control of their health and outcomes. Hospitals and clinics have begun using AR and VR technologies in the workplace with the ultimate goal of improving patient satisfaction. Healthcare providers believe the key to improving patient satisfaction is to provide adequate patient care access, a modern and efficient experience, and a more sophisticated workflow. Most importantly, they believe the key to improving patient satisfaction lies in the proper and efficient use of these new technologies by hospital administrators.

Hospital administrators have been using data and communication technologies to improve patient outreach before and after specific procedures. They believe this collection of data will allow them to better understand exactly what factors throughout the patient experience are most impactful to patient satisfaction. In addition, they believe an effective patient communication platform will inherently increase overall patient satisfaction simply because patients should be and would have an interest in staying up-to-date regarding any possible future treatment or procedures they could end up needing to undergo.

Clear and concise communication between family members, hospital administrators, doctors, and nurses can also not be understated. Hospitals are utilizing digital platforms to ensure family members of patients are able to stay informed and maintain a positive experience.

What Types of Technologies Are Being Utilized to Promote Patient Satisfaction?

Wearable technologies are among some of the new technological and digital innovations currently being utilized within the healthcare industry. Patients who are required to wear some form of wearable technologies often report a positive patient satisfaction score. This is most likely due to the fact that patients feel informed by their wearable technology. In addition, it seems to elicit feelings of control and comfort knowing that they are able to self-monitor.

Hospital administrations are also implementing massive digital data operations to ensure that patient data is protected and readily available for doctors and patients alike. Some hospitals and healthcare providers allow users to access this data through the use of mobile apps. These apps can also be used to schedule a doctor’s visit, pay a bill, track a treatment protocol, or receive other health-related information and updates. Essentially, healthcare providers are looking to improve patient satisfaction by placing each individual patient’s healthcare history in the palm of their hand.

Each of these actions taken by healthcare providers to successfully engage with their patients ultimately improves patient safety. Clear communication between healthcare providers and patients, wearable technologies that permit self-monitoring, innovative and convenient mobile applications, and patient-centered care have all been shown to have a positive and significant impact on overall patient satisfaction. The healthcare industry is expected to continue developing and adopting emerging technologies in the near future to continue to improve overall patient satisfaction.

The Why, What and How of Physician Burnout

While there are many different types of professions and employment positions that cause workers to feel burnt out and detached, those working in the medical profession and within the healthcare industry experience alarmingly high rates of burnout. Physicians, doctors, and nurses alike experience some of the highest turnover rates in the United States.

According to a report by the Mayo Clinic, in partnership with the American Medical Association, more than half of physicians in the United States experience burnout. This study was conducted over a period of three years from 2011 through 2014. Even more alarming than the overall number of physicians who have reported an experienced burnout, is the fact that this number grew throughout all three years.

Before hospitals and healthcare providers can figure out a way to prevent physician burnout, they must understand why it occurs in the first place.

What Is The Cause Of Physician Burnout?

Burnout symptoms include chronic fatigue, insomnia, forgetfulness, and can even bring on symptoms of anxiety or depression. Burnout occurs when an individual feels severely stressed out and overwhelmed. Oftentimes, they self-heal by detaching themselves from the stressful/overwhelming environment. Burnout is extremely prevalent among physicians in the healthcare industry because of the nature of the environment.

The Mayo Clinic/AMA study officially defined burnout as, “loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment.” In other words, burnout is much more than simply feeling tired and overwhelmed. Although these feelings most certainly are present, the overall symptoms are far more detrimental to an individual’s overall mental health.

What is Being Done to Address Physician Burnout?

While burnout is almost an inevitable experience among physicians, there are some solutions for physician burnout. Among them, would be to design an effective diagnostic process to help identify burnout before it occurs.

Intervention strategies have been aimed at developing behavior patterns that can alter the culture of physicians and healthcare workers. In addition, hospital administrations are endlessly working to ensure physicians are not frequently overloaded in terms of patient care. They have implemented and adopted new and emerging technologies to increase efficiency and improve the overall workflow for physicians.

Studies have suggested that currently implemented resources that are readily available to physicians for the support, treatment, and prevention of physician burnout are in fact seldom being utilized. Although nine institution-wide measures for the improvement of physician wellness have been identified, only 5% to 7% of the population of physicians actually take advantage of the resources available to them. It has been suggested that a standardized and automated wellness approach be implemented into annual physicals or hospital-provided financial counseling to minimize the stigma and reduce barriers of asking for and receiving help.

Additionally, other studies have shown that increased job satisfaction among physicians themselves can ultimately result in higher, more positive rates of patient satisfaction. This could, in part, be due to the fact that a physician who has not yet experienced symptoms of burnout is more likely to perform their job functions more efficiently and effectively than a physician who has experienced or is currently experiencing symptoms of burnout thus increasing overall patient satisfaction.

Researching Solutions for Physician Burnout

Still, effective prevention and management strategies should be researched and implemented in order to address the physician turnover rate resulting from physician burnout. Perhaps, if cultural changes are made early on, as early as medical school or residency programs, significant gains could be made in the prevention or management of physician burnout. If physician burnout can be prevented or limited further in any capacity and also have positive implications in terms of patient satisfaction, this should be the focus of more extensive research.

While the causes of physician burnout have been well-documented, solutions for physician burnout must be further explored to address this debilitating experience for physicians throughout hospitals and healthcare clinics in the United States. In addition, further understanding exactly how burnout can affect a physician’s job performance is crucial for healthcare providers to increase their patient satisfaction ratings. Ultimately, the healthcare industry should continue to research solutions for physician burnout in order to protect both physicians and their patients.

Improve Employee Performance Through Greater Contingent Workforce Visibility

As the contingent healthcare workforce continues to grow in the US and worldwide, employers are constantly tasked with finding innovative ways to find out just who makes up their contingent workforce. Knowing who your employees are, understanding their concerns, their needs, their wants, and their experiences are absolutely key to your healthcare organization achieving effective employee performance management. Therefore, choosing a vendor management system provider that offers you in-depth contingent workforce visibility is critical.

Employee performance could be extremely beneficial to organizations, but it can also be detrimental. Healthcare facilities must learn to effectively manage and influence employee performance to ensure they are getting the absolute most out of their healthcare providers and staff members while maintaining the overall happiness and engagement of their employees.

Using Contingent Workforce Visibility to Your Advantage

Contingent workforce visibility is an integral cog in the wheels of any healthcare organization who employs contingent workforce providers and staff. Having an up-to-date vendor management system in place that helps you effectively gather data on your contingent labor will allow you to establish a valuable database of information about your temporary and contracted workforce. From this database, you are able to conduct analyses and make important decisions regarding the status of each individual employee.

For instance, the performance of temporary labor employees can be evaluated by analyzing prior short-term or long-term contracts completed or by reviewing employee performance for their current contracted position, etc. This can provide crucial insight and help you make decisions on whether or not to renew a contingent healthcare provider’s contract, to assign them to another department or position or to terminate their contract altogether.

While hiring and workforce growth is expected to increase worldwide in the coming years, it is imperative for all healthcare facility decision-makers to be aware of the latest technology and vendor management solutions available that will allow them to maintain a valuable database of employee information, specifically data surrounding their contingent workforce. This will pave the way for more effective employee performance management. Greater contingent workforce visibility provides employers valuable insight that enables them to better predict the success of their temporary employees.

Additional Benefits of Contingent Workforce Visibility

Maintaining a performance database for each contingent healthcare provider or staff member can provide other benefits as well. For instance, detailed analytics can help employers measure the value of each independent worker based off of their skill set and provided services. These analytics can further allow employers to determine if their contingent workforce is being allocated most effectively and efficiently.

Greater contingent workforce visibility also provides employers with crucial and detailed records of their contingent workers for future consideration for open full-time positions that would provide healthcare benefits and retirement options.

Mobile Employee Engagement Access

Temporary workers prefer to engage with their employers throughout their daily workplace functions and interactions with the use of mobile devices and innovative tech interfaces. If they are able to easily view their assignments and tasks through a mobile employee database, employers may very well see additional improvement in employee engagement and employee performance.

In addition, the right vendor management system with an efficient mobile interface can serve as an effective tool for both employer and employee to access, manage, delegate and accept assignments and tasks. A positive mobile engagement experience for your contingent workforce providers will likely result in a positive impact on employee engagement and employee performance.

Implementing a Vendor Management Software Solution

There is a variety of vendor management systems currently available in the mainstream market that healthcare organizations can take advantage of. Be aware of common mistakes to avoid when choosing and setting up your vendor management system. Simple solutions that provide in-depth contingent workforce visibility can be easily designed and implemented into the daily workplace functions of any healthcare organization.

Consider vendor management consulting services to help you identify the VMS software that would work best for your organization’s needs. A VMS consultant can assist you with properly implementing a solution with care to ensure it does not conflict with any other workforce management software you currently have in place.

Request a consultation with a vendor management consultant to help you improve your contingent workforce visibility.