Empowering the health care workforce with connected data

With increasing technology demands, a growing patient population and workforce shortages, today’s healthcare staff are facing the unique challenges of the modern era. As a healthcare safety & quality executive and registered nurse, I’ve seen first-hand how challenging it can be to work on the frontline of patient care. Post-pandemic, recruiting and staff retention continue to be a challenge for hospitals and health systems, and burnout among clinicians is rampant. Health systems must focus on workforce optimization through evidence-based empowerment strategies and leveraging connected data and technology to improve working conditions and drive safer patient care.

The causes and effects of emotional exhaustion in healthcare

The administrative burden of working with an excess of siloed data and disconnected technology solutions is a key driver of emotional exhaustion and turnover. The amount of healthcare data is ballooning by an annual growth rate of 36%. Yet much of this data either goes unused or isn’t used to its full potential. Most healthcare organizations also work with an excess of disconnected technology solutions that add to staff’s administrative burden and hinder data sharing and analysis.

Workforce challenges coupled with siloed data and technology have trickle-down effects on the quality and safety of patient care. Medical harm is a critical and often-overlooked problem, affecting one out of four hospitalized patients in America. When healthcare staff are burdened by inefficient technology and lack access to actionable enterprise-wide data, it becomes more difficult to identify risk factors and prevent medical errors. Additionally, the mental overload driven by understaffing and inefficient processes can increase the likelihood of these errors occurring.

Strategies for workforce optimization

In 2022, the American Hospital Association (AHA) published the report, “Strengthening the Health Care Workforce,” an examination of the pain points of today’s healthcare workforce and strategies for addressing these challenges. The report outlines three strategic priorities for empowering the healthcare staff: supporting the team, building the team and using data and technology to support them.

Supporting and building the team involves implementing programs to promote employee well-being and leveraging dynamic recruiting and staffing strategies. These are critical priorities for any hospital or health system in 2024 amid workforce shortages and rapid turnover.

The third—and perhaps most overlooked—strategic priority is data and technology. Data can help healthcare organizations identify workforce trends to make informed decisions about resourcing, staffing, recruiting and more. It can also help organizations identify their problem areas and implement data-backed solutions to reduce burnout and improve employee retention.

When it comes to implementing new technology, streamlining is key. Healthcare leaders should seek to adopt solutions that automate or accelerate administrative tasks rather than adding labor to staff’s plates. I’m sure that every doctor and nurse has had the experience of administrative demands eating into their time with patients. According to a McKinsey report, 20% of an average 12-hour nursing shift could be saved by implementing technology that automates tasks. With improved efficiency and reduced emotional exhaustion, healthcare staff can focus more of their time and attention on improving the quality and safety of patient care.

Bridging datasets for actionable insights

As the AHA report states, workforce empowerment requires actionable data—something that many healthcare organizations lack sufficient access to nationwide. Liberating data silos and connecting data from across the enterprise is key to unlocking operational insights.

Connecting operational processes and data arms care teams and leaders with actionable insights and analytics in real-time. The result is improved decision-making that enhances quality and outcomes across the organization—including bolstering workforce efficiency and patient safety. By analyzing data such as retention and recruiting trends, staffing levels across departments, incident reports and human resources data, healthcare organizations can identify the process and technology changes needed to optimize workflows and enhance employee well-being. Leveraging AI with connected data solutions can also enable healthcare organizations to automate processes such as workforce scheduling and incident reporting, or even predict patient demand to optimize scheduling and resource allocation.

Empowering the healthcare workforce is critical to not only improving employee retention and wellbeing, but also to delivering safer patient care. When staff can work efficiently and clinicians can practice at the top of their licenses, patients will reap the benefits with better outcomes. By connecting disparate systems, healthcare organizations can uncover the data insights they need to support safer and happier patients and staff, and a stronger, more financially sound organization.

Ann Louise Puopolo, BSN, RN, is President of the RLDatix Safety Institute.