Time Well-Spent Experience Strategy: A Key to Reducing Physician Burnout
It’s no secret that there is a continually-worsening clinician shortage in the US and that burnout is a leading cause driving highly qualified, experienced physicians from the profession at a time when the healthcare system needs them the most. Although the physician exodus is just one of the many serious problems fueling the US Healthcare system crisis, it is the most critical to address. Without a sufficient number of physicians, the infinite loop of increased patient acuity driving up the cost of care will spiral out of control, threatening the precariously fragile state of these institutions.
While there are larger systemic issues to address, individual institutions within the medical system can leverage time well-spent experience strategy to help reduce burnout and increase job satisfaction. But the responsibility doesn’t just sit with the employers - it needs to be owned by all organizations that contribute to the physician workload, including health insurance companies, life sciences companies, and digital health companies.
The importance of time well-spent to physicians and other clinicians
The time well-spent mindset is the idea that when individuals and groups who have limited time and abundant choice focus their time and attention on experiences that are meaningful, they will feel like time is well-spent, well-saved, or well-invested. While there are a variety of reasons physicians went into medicine, caring for patients is one of the most common ones. Currently, there is a frequent disconnect between what they personally find meaningful - helping their patients - and what is incentivized by the healthcare system - patient volume to drive profitability.
A recent study by Medscape (1) on the state of physician burnout cited the top 3 causes as being: too many bureaucratic tasks, lack of respect from coworkers, and too many working hours. It is easy to understand how bureaucratic tasks don’t feel like time well-spent, especially if the connection to patient care is unclear if it gets in the way of patient care (e.g., having to type notes into the EMR during a visit, and if the task could be automated. Lack of respect from coworkers can also be understood through the lens of time well-spent/well-invested. If clinicians are investing in their work relationships but not receiving reciprocal returns, then it can feel like a waste of time. And too many working hours likely loop right back to the problem of too many bureaucratic tasks.
3 Key Ways Employers Can Help
Understand how your physicians/clinicians define meaning and time well spent
“Providing good patient care” is only one way your physicians might define meaning in their work and time well spent, and good patient care will mean different things to different clinicians. In a primary care setting, it might mean being able to spend more time with each patient more frequently, whereas, in an orthopedic practice, it might also mean having access to the most technologically-advanced surgical tools and rehab options to accelerate patient recovery time. It may mean having a more supportive work environment or more control of one’s schedule, or more personal autonomy. (The same Medscape study noted that physicians in private practice had substantially lower burnout rates, which is likely because they have more autonomy and control.)
However, even the research itself must take into account a time well-spent approach. Clinicians are already overburdened with work, so they need to see the value of investing time into participating in research. Take the time to craft and conduct a research study that asks the right questions about what is important to your clinicians. Also, consider utilizing secondary research methods such as data analysis to limit the time burden of the study on clinicians, such as the study Yale did utilizing machine learning to predict physician departures (2). Most importantly, demonstrate that you will act on the findings.
Leverage modes to understand employee roadblocks to finding meaning and time well-spent
Modes are a mindset plus a set of behaviors that will shift over the course of the workday depending on what a clinician needs to accomplish. It could range from crisis mode when treating an acute patient to administrative mode when they are reviewing and updating clinic notes. Learning your clinicians’ modes and time spent in each mode can yield insights on how to restructure workloads to create a more meaningful balance of tasks and activities to help create more meaning within and across modes.
Adopt a test-and-learn approach to pilot solutions that combine method and moment tools to enhance time well-spent
Method tools are ones that a company designs into an experience to create more meaning. These can range from taking a systems view of the clinician experience to intentionality. A systems view of the clinician experience will help you fully understand the interoperability of the various tasks the clinician needs to do in order to accomplish their jobs to be done, achieve goals, and create balance. Considering a bigger-than-work systems view could be a critical factor in reducing burnout. Intentionality can be used to design work such that physicians are spending their time on the right things and implementing tools, technology, or other administrative support to offload the burden of bureaucratic tasks.
Moment tools are inherent to the person, i.e., the clinician, and companies can leverage them to enhance types of time transactions and defining moments to help them balance their life systems. One example of these is modes - and optimizing solutions based on the various modes the clinician operates during the day. Two others that would work closely together are reflection and helping others. Solutions that help clinicians see and feel how they are positively impacting patient care - and giving them enough time to reflect on it - can also help provide more meaning and thus create an experience that feels like time well spent.
For companies creating solutions for patients that will require physician/clinician participation
As consumers take more and more ownership of their health data and health management, be it through personal choice or the requirement of a remote monitoring solution for their particular condition, the information burden on clinicians increases exponentially. Many, if not most, of these health applications, do not integrate with the EHR, meaning that the clinician will need to engage with a separate platform or data set to support patient use of these tools. Whenever companies are concepting such a solution, it is critical to consider the physician's experience with the tool within a systems view. Conducting research to understand where and how it fits into the physician workflow and designing it to be an experience that the physician considers to be time well-spent is absolutely critical for its success.
Want to learn more about how Stone Mantel can help you create time well-spent experiences for your physicians? Contact us for more information.
Summary of Medscape’s Physician Burnout & Depression report (Medscape account required to read whole report)
Machine learning model predicts physician turnover - Yale News