Over the summer, the American Medical Association (AMA) reported that for the first time since 2020, doctor burnout had fallen below 50%. That’s down from a record-high in 2021 of 62.8%, spurred by the pandemic. The AMA says the decrease marks a milestone in the work it is doing to help reduce burnout, but it continues to work to find the root causes and make sure doctors are receiving “the support they need to thrive.”
One of the focuses is on removing administrative burdens, so that doctors can focus on patient care. Data and analytics play a big role in this process, whether that is in overall hospital productivity or the work doctors are doing themselves.
Finding efficiencies
If it isn’t handled in an efficient manner, the data generated by a healthcare facility can be overwhelming for the people working with it. That includes patient data, which is both personal identifying information as well as health records, there’s billing records, and there’s more organizational information such as scheduling calendars for personnel as well as space. All of this information can come from different sources, and healthcare organizations need an analytics solution that can work with these disparate sources and bring them together into actionable data.
Some of those decisions can end up easing the burden on healthcare workers, including doctors. The data could help inform decisions that make more efficient use of their time, such as, if possible, spreading patient visits out based on the information gathered from sources such as patient quality surveys or busiest times at a facility. But doctors could be burdened even in the times they are not seeing patients directly.
AI’s increasing presence
During the pandemic, the use of patient portals to address health concerns became a popular way for patients to communicate with their doctors. With limited in-person appointments, if something came up, patients sent messages that doctors could simply respond to or then recommend next steps, whether that was a telehealth appointment, office visit, or referral. That practice has continued to remained popular now, though, and doctors are often responding to many messages in between appointments or after they are done seeing patients for the day.
In an effort to save doctors time and avoid additional stress that could lead to another increase in burnout cases, many hospital administrators have turned to AI for help. MyChart, among the most popular communications platforms used by hospitals in the United States, has begun offering an AI feature that writes replies to queries from patients.
The New York Times reports that about 15,000 doctors and assistants at more than 150 health systems are using the AI feature. There are questions about how exactly the technology should be used. It creates a draft of a reply that a doctor can then send, edit, or not use at all. In some cases, the health systems are up front with patients, including a message that informs them that AI may have been used along with the doctor’s response. Others, though, don’t acknowledge the presence of AI at all. Some health experts warn that the AI responses could be dangerous, where the technology adds possibly untrue information that it may not be able to find in the data. If a doctor does not check the response carefully enough before sending it, the response could mislead a patient.
Data’s important role
As with any use of AI, it is important to figure out the balance between using it and solely relying on it. Without federal regulations, it is the responsibility of health systems for now to make sure it is doing what is best for patients. In limited studies conducted so far, though, it does seem to be helping doctors. They report reductions in burnout using the AI to draft responses to patient messages.
For the AI to succeed, the data needs to be reliable. The New York Times article mentions a time the AI made up a vaccination status because it didn’t have access to a patient’s vaccination records. This is where a reliable analytics solution comes in. Once AI has access to the data it needs to draw its conclusions, that data needs to be 100% accurate. If a data solution can’t create one version of the truth from the many sources involved in healthcare technology, it creates potentially dangerous situations for patients. Patients are relying on their health provider to give them flawless information. That can only happen with the best analytics solutions treating the health provider’s data.
The decline in physician burnout is encouraging news. As the AMA acknowledges, though, the work isn’t done. Technology seems to be the key to helping further reduce the numbers. For healthcare providers to use that technology to achieve the best possible results both for its doctors and its patients, it needs to make sure it has the most accurate data possible.
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