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This Year’s Trends Center on Health IT Adoption to Ease Clinician Burnout

Surescripts officials say that 2022 will be a year filled with health IT adoption as COVID-19 continues to exacerbate clinician burnout concerns.

Hannah Nelson
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Published: 11 Jan 2022

This year’s health IT trends will include increased adoption of specialty prescribing tools and other solutions to mitigate clinician burnout, according to statements from Surescripts officials emailed to journalists.

Andrew Mellin, MD, vice president, and chief medical information officer at Surescripts, noted that COVID-19 has exacerbated clinician burnout concerns.

"For clinicians, trying to balance patient care with innumerable faxes, phone calls, and communication issues is contributing to an epidemic of burnout,” explained Mellin. “Although we can't control COVID-19 and public opinions about science, we can do things to make providers’ lives easier by removing administrative barriers and burdens so caregivers can focus on being caregivers.”

Urgent need for interoperability

Ensuring providers have access to patient health data at the point of care is key for patient safety. Access to patient health information also helps keep healthcare costs down by eliminating the need for duplicate tests.

"The industry is generating more patient data from more sources than ever before,” said Joe Montler, chief customer officer at Surescripts. “The problem is, meaningful data isn’t always available at the right time, in the right place, for the healthcare professionals who need it.”

“Providers’ access to and use of clinical insights will be an essential part of improving the patient experience and care for patients in 2022,” he added.

Better care management

Enhanced information sharing via health IT can help ensure providers have access to the data necessary for optimal care management, noted Adnan Qadir, chief strategy officer at Surescripts.

"We are still seeing delays in treatment 20 months into the pandemic, which will, unfortunately, lead to a rise in chronic conditions diagnoses and cost burdens to the whole system,” Qadir said.

“Care management, disease management, and other services can’t rely on manual processes to address this systemic issue,” he added. “In 2022 we’ll see better access to actionable patient intelligence and enhanced information sharing to help manage at-risk patient populations." 

Surge in specialty medications

Mellin noted that Surescrits health IT products can help aid the specialty prescribing process, which is an especially burdensome aspect of the care delivery process.

“In my more than 20 years in health IT, the specialty prescribing and fulfillment process is the most complicated process I've ever seen to get a patient on a therapy,” noted Mellin. “Meanwhile, more promising—and pricey—specialty drugs come onto the market each year.”

“The future of specialty prescribing and fulfillment is here, thanks to the help of advanced technology,” Mellin added. “In 2022, we’ll see greater adoption of solutions simplifying this inherently complex process.”

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