Two-thirds of healthcare organizations have increased staff to boost EHR adoption, according to a study by Nuance Communications and HIMSS Analytics to be released next week at the 2017 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition.

But increasing staff is not sustainable for these organizations, said Brenda Hodge, senior vice president of healthcare marketing at Nuance Communications, a clinician information systems vendor. What's more, 77 percent of the organizations plan to conduct more training to increase EHR adoption, and 67 percent plan to use different technologies to enhance the EHR experience, including such options as mobility tools, speech recognition at the point of care, and computer-assisted physician documentation, according to the study.

“Now that everyone has been through the EHR implementation phase, healthcare organizations are trying to realize the intended benefits of EHRs, and there is a lot more work to do to realize these benefits," Hodge said. "And they also are dealing with all the regulations with value-based care that have put an additional administrative burden on clinicians, and thus they are dealing with clinician satisfaction issues now more than ever.”

Hodge advised healthcare organizations to keep searching for ways to make patient care better for clinicians, as that, in turn, will make things better for patients.

“We are almost at a crisis in this country with clinician dissatisfaction – the increasing rate of early retirement, people not recommending the field to the younger generation – physician satisfaction is at an all-time low and healthcare organizations need to be looking for ways to make things better,” she said. “Looking for tools to enhance the experience, doing more at the point of care, providing facts and evidence at the point of care that makes their job easier.”

For example, if a clinician does not see Hepatitis B patients often and she has such a patient in her office, she will find there are 64 different combinations of things she can prescribe for that patient, Hodge explained.

“So, for instance, with the Nuance artificial intelligence engine serving the right combination up and giving the clinician the answer they need, the clinician can spend more time counseling the patient and making sure the patient is complying with the regimen they agreed to,” she said. “This is the kind of thing healthcare organizations can look at when at HIMSS17, tools and technologies and services that will enhance the experience for the clinician, because such tools will have a tremendous impact for the overall care team and patient care quality.”

Hodge said another theme that likely will be on the minds of many HIMSS17 attendees will be how to improve quality scores.

“Quality scores not only impact healthcare organizations’ financials, but we are seeing a lot more physicians personally motivated to improve these scores, in part because their quality scores are documented and published on web sites,” she said. “You can Google and find out your doctor’s quality scores, and that is becoming something consumers are looking at. This is very personal to the clinician.”

HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

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