Guest Post from Arlen Meyers
A group of former and current providers convened recently to discuss how digital transformation can be both contributing to and alleviating burnout.
Technofatigue, innovation fatigue and change fatigue are as ubiquitous as the Delta variant in unvaccinated people.
It’s time for sickcare delivery organizations to demand a burnout impact statement from vendors as part of the vetting, piloting and implementation process. We should call a time out to deal with the systemic causes of sickcare professional burnout attributable to technology.
John Elkington coined the “Triple Bottom Line” of People, Planet and Profit (also known as the 3Ps, TBL or 3BL). Up to today it is still gaining popularity and it has become part of everyday business language. All reason to be satisfied, one would think. However, despite its increasing popularity, Elkington has “recalled” the 3BL in a short article in Harvard Business Review. The reason, so we can extract from his comments, is the rhetorical misuse of the framework as an accounting and reporting tool, while profit still remains center stage.
There are many tools to measure the specific impact on people, planet and profits of a specific intervention.
The environmental impact statement (EIS) is a government document that outlines the impact of a proposed project on its surrounding environment. In the United States, these statements are mandated by federal law for certain projects. Environmental impact statements are meant to inform the work and decisions of policymakers and community leaders.
The Economic Impact Analysis (EIA) tool shows how your community health project’s spending on staff, supplies, equipment, and other expenses benefits your community. The EIA Tool can be used by any community health organization wanting to understand how its activities affect the community.
The burnout impact statement (BIS) would likewise outline the impact of a proposed digital health project on sickcare stakeholders, particularly end user sickcare professionals.
Some useful parts of the BIS process would include:
- A national BIS database
- An evidence based registry of results
- Including the BIS as a KPI during pilots
- Mandatory input by end users during the evaluation and vetting stages by care innovation centers
- A standardized pre and post pilot/implementation measurement tool
- A BIS adverse events reporting system
- A BIS risk management evaluation and mitigation strategy
- A patient engagement and communications strategy to clarify expectations about when, how and who will respond to electronic requests for information
- Reimbursement and payment for electronic communications and a new revenue model for responding to them. You pay more for same day delivery from Amazon don’t you?
- Creating third parties as data and information delivery managers or a data concierge service
If you are not burned out, digital health will probably make you cooked but not fried. Sorry, but EMRs were only the start. The bad news of the BIS requirement, though, is we would have to hire even more MD/MBAs, who left practice because they were burned out by technology, to manage all of this.
Image credit: Pixabay
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