Healthcare professionals are at the ‘HEART’ of the caregiving sector; tackling unforeseen conditions every day. Because the challenges faced by the care providers are huge, they are often stressed, burnt out and are at the perils of other psychosomatic health hazards. This adversely affects the quality of life and care providing ability of the medicos. With technology trying to place its foot in the medical world and gather popularity amongst healthcare peers, it is desirable for the technologies to not only ease operations for the medicos but also improve their efficiency.
In the last two years, medical professionals have experienced prolonged social isolation, a series of lockdowns & restrictions, continued uncertainty due to the pandemic and rising levels of mental stress which has negatively impacted the working professionals in India more than most places in the world, revealed a new study by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence.
Maybe, this is why — In the post-pandemic era, healthcare facilities are challenged with the necessity of better work culture for care professionals. Eventually encashing it in terms of healthy & happy patients — A strategy well recommended by the healthcare leaders.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, patients & medical professionals were seen successfully accommodating to virtual consultations. This has certainly become one of the popular care delivery trends; meanwhile keeping the care providers and the patients happy at their ends. According to an online survey, 73% work satisfaction in the care practitioner’s community with virtual care delivery methods. 65% out of these have even considered it to be a cost-effective and efficient tool for their practices as well as their patients. However, 78% reported that the experience for their first video consultation was not efficient due to vague symptom input from their patients.
With telemedicine as a potential care delivery method, medical professionals can efficiently connect with their patients within seconds from anywhere while attracting patients who want virtual consultation options. Especially, in the rural areas of the country, where establishing an assisted-telemedicine service is more convenient than building a hospital. Evidently, we’ll be walking with telemedicine into the post-pandemic era; convinced of its care convenience and patient engagement benefits.
Talking about the convenience — imagine being a healthcare practitioner and treating a chronic patient with a fragmented medical history record versus consulting the same with detailed EMR. Between both of the scenarios, wouldn’t it be much easier to help the patient with an elaborate medical record?
EMR introduction into the healthcare facilities will facilitate easy & timely patient referrals with verified medical history records, further avoiding unnecessary diagnostic tests.
A Medspace report states that 59% of doctors feel a lack of fulfilment when they spend a considerable amount of time on administrative tasks. This eventually contributes to burnout while reducing their efficiency profoundly. Introducing a sophisticated EMR will certainly assist to bring different care providers on a single platform.
Running a successful care practice requires a lot of effort. And, despite appointing administrative staff, medical professionals end up assisting with the workflow. However, automating duties that don’t require face-to-face interaction will simplify the operations, thereby reducing stress & workload on the medicos. One such optimized way to reduce stress is to introduce automatic reception desks which can streamline online patient appointments, bill payments and queue management systems for the facility while completely removing the dependency on the clinic staff. Such free time due to less work will result in improved efficiency.
Pro tip: After automating the reception desk, your staff can welcome some — or all — of the administrative responsibilities you were handling. Consequently, more time for patients and reduced working hours.
HArborSays: While re-imaging healthcare in the post-covid-19 era, implementing work systems to enhance work culture in the healthcare sector is a must! And, from the above discussion, it is evident that healthtech is the next step towards a better work culture in healthcare. Being a healthcare professional is a challenging role and if healthtech can facilitate convenience, timely care and less paperwork then it’s time to welcome healthtech with open arms.
HarborSays 