{"id":28638,"date":"2020-02-19T13:24:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T18:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/?p=28638"},"modified":"2021-12-15T00:17:17","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T05:17:17","slug":"ending-physician-burnout-and-making-doctors-lives-better-with-microsoft-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/ending-physician-burnout-and-making-doctors-lives-better-with-microsoft-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Microsoft Teams Help Ease Physician Burnout?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The future of Microsoft Teams for healthcare holds a world of possibilities to aid in preventing burnout amongst the healthcare workforce.<\/h2>\n
\n

During my 30 years as an ED physician in one of Chicago\u2019s Level 1 Trauma Centers, I experienced firsthand the transition from paper medical records to electronic medical record systems (EMR). I was so excited to watch those piles of hand-written charts shrink as medical record-keeping slowly moved into the digital world.<\/p>\n

But the transition to EMR also brought additional burdens for clinicians\u2014overwhelming us daily with documentation requirements. We still<\/em> have a long way to go. Is there a way to help with these overwhelming tasks by using readily available tools?<\/p>\n

Using Microsoft Teams in Healthcare<\/a><\/h2>\n

Three years ago, Microsoft launched a platform with tremendous potential to speed the change, making life easier for doctors, clinicians, patients and patients\u2019 families. Microsoft Teams<\/a> is a cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) platform that securely integrates chat, video, calling,\u00a0meetings,\u00a0and document collaboration.<\/strong> Teams can even host and share medical images for group consults.<\/p>\n

I believe this powerful new tool can help address one of the most significant problems facing the medical community\u2014burnout. Though the most recent Mayo Clinic report on physician burnout and work-life integration<\/a> shows some improvement in physician burnout, nearly 44 percent of all doctors reported at least one symptom of burnout in 2017, compared to just over 28 percent of all American workers.<\/p>\n

And with the American Medical Association<\/a> saying it \u201cis focused on using technology as an asset and not a burden, and developing solutions to make physician burnout a thing of the past,\u201d technology like Microsoft Teams must play a role in tackling burnout and making life easier for everyone in the medical community.<\/p>\n

Teams offers a single HIPAA-compliant repository for storing medical records and images, a \u201cbase station,\u201d so to speak\u2014but it can be so much more. It is also a powerful tool for scheduling and planning, virtual consulting, even conferencing with patients\u2019 families around the world in real-time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Putting Teams into Action<\/h2>\n

To illustrate what a Teams-based medical community might look like, I\u2019d like to introduce you to my friend Lauren (fictional name, real<\/em> person!).<\/p>\n

Lauren is a neurologist and a mom. She dreads getting home at night because instead of spending time with her family, she spends hours completing notes from the day. And, she dreads getting up in the morning, because it means an overwhelming, seemingly unmanageable list of meetings, consults, urgent issues that popped up overnight, and more obstacles that keep her from her true passion\u2014her patients.<\/p>\n

As she moves through the day, she encounters even more roadblocks. Let\u2019s imagine how Microsoft Teams could improve a day in Lauren\u2019s busy life:<\/strong><\/p>\n

6:00 a.m.<\/strong> Lauren uses her phone to ask her Teams-based chatbot, \u201cWhat do I have planned for the day?\u201d Instead of overwhelming her with information, it prioritizes what is most important by accessing information stored in Teams about meetings, messages she needs to address, new information about her patients, and any conflicts that might alter her day.<\/p>\n

8:00 a.m.<\/strong> Lauren\u2019s teammates hold a digital huddle using Teams\u2019 whiteboard capabilities. Teams records the data from the huddle in a secure database, again improving care coordination and communication among other doctors, some of whom aren\u2019t even in the country.<\/p>\n

8:42 a.m.<\/strong> A message from Teams\u2019 secure messaging system notifies Lauren that one of her pediatric patients, Maria, started experiencing serious complications from a procedure conducted the previous day. Fluid has accumulated in Maria\u2019s brain, putting her recovery at risk. Lauren uses Teams to alert everyone on Maria\u2019s care team, setting up a quick meeting to work out a plan.<\/p>\n

10:17 a.m.<\/strong> After stabilizing her, Lauren uses Teams to conference with Maria\u2019s family and let them know what has happened and how they can help. Some of them are in Mexico, but through Teams, she can communicate with them simultaneously, so that all the family members get firsthand information. Meanwhile, Teams alerted the hospital pharmacy to Maria\u2019s new medication regimen.<\/p>\n

11:00 a.m.<\/strong> Lauren finds a quiet corner to update Maria\u2019s chart quickly. She accesses the information she needs quickly through her 2-in-1 laptop. With Teams, she can do her work from any device, without having to login to a virtual private network (VPN) or remember a password.<\/p>\n

2:00 p.m. <\/strong>In a mid-day consult with her team, Lauren pulls up her notes, photos from Maria\u2019s procedure, and her latest scans through Teams. Because Teams has ambient voice documentation, it records everyone in the room and turns their words into valuable discrete data, such as orders, that can benefit her and all the physicians on her team.<\/p>\n

6:30 p.m.<\/strong> Lauren arrives home and spends 30 minutes in her office speaking her notes from the day into her laptop. Before heading downstairs to spend the evening with her family, she asks it, \u201cWhat does tomorrow look like?\u201d Then she logs off for the day, knowing if any true emergencies arise, Teams will let her know.<\/p>\n

Finally<\/h2>\n

Can Lauren\u2019s world of a streamlined workflow for patient care with ambient voice documentation, ordering, scheduling, conferencing, care coordination and collaboration become a reality?<\/p>\n

I think it will soon, and Microsoft Teams will help pave the way for less burnout, improved patient care, and a streamlined digital healthcare workforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The future of Microsoft Teams for healthcare holds a world of possibilities to aid in preventing burnout amongst the healthcare workforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":28639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16862,16926],"coauthors":[15012],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-07-21 19:57:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28638"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}