The level of burnout being experienced by clinicians in hospitals across the country “threatens workforce stability and [the] ability to execute the clinical mission,” according to an April 4 University of Michigan Health press release.
To give physicians and nurses the ability to focus more on providing clinical care while also eliminating unnecessary and arduous administrative duties, the health system is launching “Choosing Wisely,” an initiative to reduce burnout for clinicians and improve patient satisfaction.
The first step of the Choosing Wisely program includes surveying clinicians — anyone who delivers direct patient care — to “identify, design and rigorously and rapidly evaluate specific projects focused on improving the value of clinical care.”
Before rolling out the initiative, a team at U-M Health in launching a workgroup to seek feedback from doctors and nurses about the type of administrative work that can be scaled back to allow more patient-facing time. “Low-value” administrative duties are those that “create unnecessary burdens for the clinician workforce; do not have sufficient evidence base to improve clinical quality, access, equity, or other organizational outcomes (e.g., financial performance); do not address outcomes patients care about; and are duplicative or a waste of time.
Examples of these types of duties that Choosing Wisely aims to curb include time-consuming charting features, documentation processes and signature requirements, mandatory compliance and risk-management training, and prior authorization processes, among others.
