Workforce Woes Surpass Financial Pressure As Healthcare’s Top Threat

Clinician burnout, staffing challenges, and nursing shortages are the top organizational threats over the next year, according to most healthcare leaders.

CIOs, IT leaders, and clinicians responding to symplr’s second annual “Compass Survey” recently ranked workforce challenges above financial pressure and other organizational threats in this year’s survey. In last year’s survey, respondents ranked financial pressure as the top organizational threat although it was a close second this year with 39 percent versus 41 percent for challenges with clinician and nursing burnout and shortages.

Only about 9 percent of respondents, who were from leading US health systems and mostly members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), said uncertainty around payer dynamics with value-based care, and 5 percent said cybersecurity and patient privacy.

Other low-level organizational threats included regulatory compliance and penalties and lack of interoperability and data accuracy.

Healthcare organizations face a range of organizational challenges in a post-pandemic world. However, the survey underscored the difficulties even top US health systems are facing with maintaining a healthy and sufficient workforce.

An overwhelming majority of respondents to the survey agreed that managing repercussions from staff shortages (97 percent), recruiting nurses from outside the organization (97 percent), and retaining nurses (96 percent) are challenges for their organization.

Nurse informaticists responding to the survey also largely agreed that efficiency with technology (75 percent), data management (72 percent), and interoperability (70 percent) are top challenges of their jobs.

Results indicate a need to consolidate healthcare operations solutions in order to give clinicians time back to focus on patient care, the survey report stated. About 84 percent of all respondents said their organization’s clinicians could redirect at least 10 percent more time to clinical care each week if their healthcare operations software were on a single platform. Clinical leaders were even more confident than their IT counterparts, with a small group (15 percent) identifying 50 percent or more time to redirect to clinical care each week.

The average projected time back for clinicians to spend with patients due to technology efficiencies was 20 percent, the survey found.

Health IT is a major source of clinician, and more specifically nurse, burnout and work stress. Technology has been one of the main sources of clinician burnout, with a 2019 American Medical Association (AMA) study attributing physician burnout to high volumes of data entry and poor EHR usability. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed this and other workforce issues to a head as clinicians reported record-high levels of burnout.

Reducing the number of clicks to perform clinical care is one way healthcare organizations can improve the clinician’s experience in hopes of reducing burnout and turnover. Streamlined technology can make the clinician’s life easier.

Reimagining the technology landscape for healthcare operations can also increase efficiencies across the enterprise — a major priority for healthcare organizations facing rising inflation, declining reimbursement rates, and higher labor expenses, the survey stated.