Tap Into Scheduling Data to Fight Provider Burnout

Stress on front-line providers over the past year and a half has been well documented. Even in health care settings that haven’t been ground zero for COVID-19 outbreaks, the enormous disruptions to work and home life have taken a toll.

However, we can’t blame physician burnout entirely on the pandemic. Although 42% of physicians reported being burned out in a recent annual survey, 79% of them said their burnout began before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, what was their biggest concern? Work-life balance far outranked compensation and other issues as the primary reason physicians felt burned out. When asked to choose what would help mitigate burnout, 42% said “more manageable work and schedule,” and 35% noted “increased control/autonomy.”

The takeaway is clear: COVID-19 added extra stress, but providers who were already stretched thin need help gaining a sense of control over their schedules and their work-life balance.

Tame Complexity With Technology

Provider burnout is a complex issue, but every step taken to make providers’ lives easier and more efficient can start to resolve it. Minimizing administrative headaches and keeping providers well-rested and integrated can add to their sense of content. In fact, when asked what contributed most to burnout, 58% of the surveyed physicians replied, “too many bureaucratic tasks.”

Although better schedules may not address every concern, they can go a long way toward enabling the work-life balance most providers want. It’s almost a given that anyone—physicians included—can feel dissatisfied if they consistently receive a work schedule that fails to accommodate their requests and preferences. The question, of course, is how to balance coverage and patient care needs against the needs of each individual provider within a health care organization.

Coverage is especially crucial in any type of shift-based health care environment where services and patient care can’t be postponed. Amid continually changing patient care needs, schedulers must find ways to cover all shifts and tasks with the providers at hand while simultaneously meeting regulatory requirements.

That’s what makes provider scheduling such a complicated math problem. In that environment, personal time off (PTO) and other provider requests may become “nice-to-haves.” Too often, health care organizations default to using the same schedule template for weeks or months at a time simply because it’s too difficult within most systems to account for each provider’s personal preferences. Yet that type of detailed provider data can be a valuable asset in reducing burnout.

Technology that captures provider preferences and then takes an enterprise and metaheuristic approach to schedules can quickly optimize the “math problem” to create fair schedules that honor individual requests. With the appropriate level of functionality assigned to each user—no more or less access than they need—providers can easily see and manage their own schedules. That includes adjusting for planned time off and enabling providers to trade their shifts when events come up unexpectedly.

However, to gain such flexibility, solutions must leverage metaheuristic algorithms that accommodate vast numbers of intricate, often competing preferences and rules. For example, no provider can work back-to-back shifts; provider A needs PTO this Tuesday morning; provider B wants every Wednesday off; provider C needs to work 25 more hours this month. Traditional algorithms will sift through such requirements and spit out a single, black-and-white schedule “answer.” Metaheuristic technology can run millions of schedule iterations in minutes and score them against how well they match your rules. It allows health care organizations to see all the different potential schedule compromises and, through the scoring approach, select the schedule that represents the right shade of gray.

From an administrative standpoint, optimizing schedules this way builds efficiency into the system. It allows organizations to meet their enterprise and department needs while giving providers much-needed balance and autonomy. That may do more than improving providers’ outlook—it may also enhance the patient experience.

Like any human being, providers work better when they feel content and satisfied. The ability to take time off or easily trade shifts may generate the boost that providers need to effortlessly deliver more positive patient experiences.

Master the Work-Life Balance

So much of the change in health care in recent years has come from leveraging electronic health records and other sources of patient data. To change the trajectory on provider burnout, health care organizations should similarly tap into the wealth of data found in their scheduling systems.

Optimizing providers’ schedules alongside other resources can give them the efficiency and breathing room they need to find their personal work-life balance and reduce burnout even in the most challenging situations.