ATA2022: Tips to Reduce Clinician Burnout and Improve the Patient Experience

While virtual care technologies and other digital health tools aim to improve care delivery, they can lead to frustration or additional work if not implemented with clinicians and patients in mind. Physician burnout costs the U.S. healthcare industry an estimated $4.6 billion a year, and 34 percent of nurses plan to leave their current role by the end of 2022. In addition to staff shortages, clinicians increasingly must spend time outside of working hours going through their inboxes and filling out documentation, all of which contributes to burnout. As healthcare systems continue to adopt digital health tools, it’s important to take measures to mitigate clinician burnout while also considering ways to improve the patient experience with these technologies. These topics were covered in sessions at the American Telemedicine Association’s ATA2022 conference in Boston.

In the session “Coping with Burnout: Supporting Clinician and Workforce Engagement, Wellness and Resiliency,” Marlene McDermott, vice president of therapy services at Array Behavioral Care, said many clinicians are resigning because they have more choices, especially in behavioral health where recognition of the field’s importance is growing. “We have to take care of our clinicians really well. Many are leaving because private practices are booming as a result of telehealth,” she said. “We have to take care of them to keep them.”