athenahealth Launches Clinical Advisory Board to Improve EHR Workflow

EHR vendor athenahealth has announced the launch of its clinical advisory board to serve as a forum providing feedback to improve EHR workflows for clinicians.

“Feedback is crucial to athenahealth as we work to improve and enhance the customer experience and build new capabilities into our platform, and the Clinical Advisory Board provides another incredibly effective channel for us to hear from the people who use our products every day,” Nele Jessel. MD, chief medical officer of athenahealth, said in a press release.

“I look forward to working with the board on our efforts to transform and improve the delivery of healthcare and better serve our customers and their patients where they need us most, at the moment of care.”

The board, composed of 30 customer members, will focus on integrating the clinical voice into product design and development. Additionally, members will collaborate with athenahealth’s product team, offering ideas on the long-term direction of the EHR vendor’s product roadmap and clinical features currently in active development.

Currently, the clinical advisory board aims to tackle EHR challenges associated with provider burnout, including better curation of patient data in charts and decreasing documentation time.

According to the press release, members of the athenahealth clinical advisory board are appointed for a period between one to two years. Following the appointment, the board will meet virtually every two months and in person once a year.

“The members of the Clinical Advisory Board are very invested in influencing the decisions and path of athenahealth’s development, and prioritizing those biggest pain points that are there right now in the workflow,” said Katherine Gregory, MD, an OB-GYN with San Francisco Gynecology“I also love collaborating with both clinicians and administrators. It takes all of us to help a patient have a simple experience in making an appointment all the way through the visit and beyond, and we need to put our heads together to make that process as smooth and seamless as possible.”

Efforts to streamline EHR workflows continue to be a main priority of the healthcare industry, especially with such high rates of provider burnout.

In a recent survey by athenahealth, 92 percent of physicians reported one or more issues that cause them to feel burned out regularly. The leading cause of regular clinician burnout is excessive documentation requirements, according to the survey results.

This move comes as a part of previous efforts by athenahealth to address clinician burnout. Earlier this year, the EHR vendor released athenaOne Voice Assistant Powered by Nuance, a voice-driven application that aims to alleviate clinician burnout and enhance the patient experience.