Digital Workspace Catalyst for Healthcare Redesign

It's time to consider a new approach to a longstanding healthcare employee experience issue, according to the latest assessment by McKinsey & Company.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Academy of Medicine found that burnout had reached crisis levels among the U.S. health workforce, with 35-54 percent of nurses and physicians, and 45-60 percent of medical students and residents reporting burnout symptoms.

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, researchers estimate that annual burnout-related employee turnover costs are $9 billion for Nurses and $2.6 to $6.3 billion for Physicians. Note, these estimates don’t include the turnover among other types of healthcare workers.

In my research on this topic, I wanted to know how can technology applications play a role to help reduce burnout? What are the implications for executive leaders in the healthcare sector that seek a viable solution? So, I decided to gather and review the related independent market studies, and then summarize those findings. The most compelling insights I discovered are as follows:

One of the key causes of burnout cited by healthcare workers includes the IT tools driving the future of the sector – such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and associated Digital Transformation initiatives. One of the top issues is the demand for ongoing EHR data entry.

Moreover, everyone agrees there’s a talent crisis. Healthcare organizations must recruit and retain more skilled practitioners. Leaders are applying automation for some aspects of the hiring and onboarding process, enabling them to identify and recruit new hires more quickly.

A Quest for Healthcare Transformation

Shortages have driven many healthcare leaders to try new approaches -- such as telemedicine and virtual consultations -- to fill the void and drive greater cost efficiencies. These solutions may help to reduce clinician burnout, by sharing the workload among those who work remotely.

Furthermore, Anywhere Workforce business models can enable healthcare organizations to employ professionals with specialized skills. In some cases, human resource (HR) teams can now source skilled and experienced talent far beyond the local communities that they serve.

The Systemic Challenges for U.S. Healthcare Organizations

But before I outline the solution opportunities, I’ll quantify some key challenges.

• Healthcare capacity is limited by funding and reimbursement practices, outdated treatment models, excessive administration, inefficient processes, and ongoing labor shortages.
• It’s estimated between $760-$935 billion, 25 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending, is wasted on administrative complexity, treatment pricing failures, and poor care delivery.
• According to the findings of a study in 2021 reported by Mayo Clinic, one in five U.S. physicians, and two in five nurses say they intend to leave the practice of medicine.

Healthcare Workflow Improvement Opportunities

In the latest Deloitte Survey of U.S. Physicians, 660 respondents shared their views of healthcare market trends that impact the current and future state of practicing medicine. The survey found that the automation of administrative tasks could significantly improve physician workflow.

Physicians say prior authorizations (72 percent), communications with pharmacists (71 percent), and provider credentialing (64 percent) are the biggest opportunities to automate their work.

To improve the Digital Employee Experience, healthcare organizations can also adopt human-centered design principles to enhance interactions between clinicians, and with their patients.

To be effective, a modern Digital Workspace solution must streamline workflows and help to reduce the burden of administrative tasks. It can also advance how organizations recruit and retain healthcare practitioners by demonstrating a progressive caregiver-enabled culture.

Business Case for Digital Workspace Solutions

VMware Digital Workspace solutions deliver tried and proven benefits for today’s healthcare organizations, their employee clinicians, and the IT support teams that manage these solutions.

Benefits for Healthcare Organizations

• Improved patient care: our solution can help healthcare organizations improve patient care by providing clinicians with secure, reliable access to patient information from anywhere. This can help clinicians make better decisions about patient care and improve the overall quality of care.
• Reduced costs: help healthcare organizations reduce costs by streamlining IT operations and reducing the need for expensive hardware and software.
• Increased efficiency: help healthcare organizations increase efficiency by enabling clinicians to work more productively from anywhere. This can lead to shorter wait times for patients and improved patient satisfaction.

Benefits for Employee Clinicians

• Improved productivity: our solution can help employee clinicians improve their productivity by providing them with a secure, reliable, and easy-to-use platform to access patient information and applications. This can help clinicians spend less time on administrative tasks and more time providing care to patients.
• Increased flexibility: help employee clinicians increase their flexibility by enabling them to work from anywhere. This can be especially beneficial for clinicians who need to work from home or travel frequently.
• Enhanced security: help employee clinicians enhance the security of patient information by providing a secure platform to access and share data. This can help protect patient privacy and ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations.

Benefits for IT Support Teams

• Reduced complexity: our solution can help IT support teams reduce complexity by providing a single platform to manage all user devices and applications. This can help IT teams save time and resources and improve the overall user experience.
• Increased agility: help IT support teams increase agility by providing a scalable and flexible platform that can adapt to changing business needs. This can help IT teams respond quickly to new challenges or opportunities.
• Advanced security: help CISOs and IT support teams to advance the security of patient information by providing a secure platform to manage user devices and applications. This can help to reduce legal or regulatory risks.

In summary, we can demonstrate how numerous healthcare providers across the globe have already reaped the rewards of deploying VMware’s Digital Workspace solutions. Here are a few customer success story examples:

“Digitalized and personalized medical IT would not be possible without a partner like VMware. Advanced applications that use AI help us to substantially improve the quality of patient care.“

Dr. Felix Nensa, Radiologist | UME

“VMware Horizon has been instrumental in changing how I’m able to communicate with the extended cardiology team and my patients. I can be anywhere, in other hospitals or at home, and have immediate access to the information I require to make a sound clinical decision.”

Patrick Donnelly, Clinical Director | SEHSCT

“We chose VMware Workspace ONE because we want every employee to be able to work flexibly with the device of their choice from any location. Comparable solutions didn’t cover the service we needed to manage smartphones, tablets, and notebooks with different operating systems through one platform.”

Adrian Schewendener, IT Business Partner | Zühlke

Join the Global Healthcare Innovators

We invite you to join your peers. Imagine the possibilities for your organization when you empower frontline workers. Then, when you’re ready, contact us for a free initial consultation and request assistance to outline a business case for your specific healthcare frontline worker application.

"Based on our assessment, we estimate that a net 10 to 20 percent of time spent during a 12-hour shift is spent on activities that could be optimized through tech enablement. Investing in digital approaches that automate tasks (either completely or partially), rather than simply redistributing workload, could potentially free up valuable time for nurses." said McKinsey

Research and Other Resources:

• 'Hospital at Home' Users Group Research