By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    bowl of vegetable salad
    Raw Foods: benefits and harms
    November 9, 2021
    pros and cons of the keto diet
    Read This Before You Follow the Keto Diet
    May 18, 2022
    spinal cord injuries
    4 Potential Causes of Spinal Cord Injuries (and How to Seek Compensation)
    May 25, 2022
    Latest News
    7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
    August 20, 2025
    Hospital Pest Control and the Fight Against Superbugs
    August 20, 2025
    Hygiene Beyond The Clinic: Attention To Overlooked Non-Clinical Spaces
    August 13, 2025
    5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
    August 3, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    TBI: Some Surprising Statistics
    February 9, 2016
    Your Keys to Safer, Even More Secure Healthcare Cloud Services
    January 13, 2015
    4 Career Options in Healthcare Industry that Combine Big Data & Healthcare
    February 5, 2021
    Latest News
    How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
    August 22, 2025
    How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
    August 22, 2025
    How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
    August 22, 2025
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: How do we get past “notification overload” in healthcare?
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Business > Hospital Administration > How do we get past “notification overload” in healthcare?
BusinessHospital AdministrationMedical InnovationsTechnology

How do we get past “notification overload” in healthcare?

Flow Health
Flow Health
Share
9 Min Read
SHARE

By Robert Rowley, MD

By Robert Rowley, MD

One of the unintended consequences of moving healthcare onto Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has been an increase in time spent reviewing a much-increased volume of messages for the clinician. EHRs were supposed to simplify and streamline the in-office and in-hospital workflows, but what has happened instead has been “notification overload.” A recent article published in JAMA showed that, for primary care physicians, managing EHR notifications costs about an extra hour of work per day. In a fee-for-service environment, such additional workload burden is uncompensated, adding to burnout.

Granted that EHRs make it much easier for elements of clinical information about their patients to be seen – everything from lab reports, imaging reports, correspondence from other clinicians, medication refills, forms from home health and other agencies needing review and signature, and messages from patients – the question remains: is this the right workflow for all this information? A legitimate fear from clinicians is that, now that all this information is available, there is liability if something is missed. So the default workflow is that everything must pass in front of the eyes of the physician.

More Read

The Ministry of Health in Oman Moves from Analog to Digital Radiography
What to Expect from a hair transplant procedure – steps, recovery and more
CEO’s Sleep: How Many Hours do Entrepreneurs Sleep?
Surgical Sealants, Glues, Sutures/Clips, Hemostats Outside the U.S.
Planning an Enterprise Archive (VNA) to Accommodate Collaboration in Precision Medicine

Layered on top of this are other workflows that typically involve other staff as well. This includes things like prior authorization for intended procedures, referrals, or medications. It also includes reviewing population dashboards to see how your patient population is faring when measured against certain criteria – these kinds of things become increasingly important as we move from a fee-for-service to a value-based payment system. Often, staff uses IT tools to collect this information, but then it needs to be passed in front of the eyes of the physician.

Is this the future of medicine?

Assuming that EHRs become better at being documentation-collection devices, and even if that task becomes quite fast and facile, there is still the work burden of reviewing the ever-increasing tide of “notifications,” and doing things about patient populations not being seen today. Is that the best use of physician skills and time?

Clearly, no.

The most important things that clinicians do is establish long-term trusted relationships with patients, and help interpret and bring meaning to a mountain of data that can be overwhelming. Physicians are assumed to have access to all the data (which, as we have seen in a fragmented system where health data is broken into institution-centered silos, is not often true), and can bring that into the right context for the individual patient.

There are two areas of technology which can help free the clinicians from the data-entry and data-review burdens, and allow them to do what they do best (and to do what is often the reason such people went into medicine as a career in the first place).

(1) Automation of care plans

One area where much of the information-processing burden can be lifted is through Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted Care Plan creation. If the health data about a patient were collected and accessible in a unified, longitudinal data store, AI can be used to identify patterns in a given patient’s case, compare it with patterns found with others, take into consideration all the health-plan-specific preferences (medications, preferred providers, etc.), and create a unified Care Plan. That would be the basis of automatic authorization, order creation, and removing roadblocks in the pathway to getting to definitive care.

When shared between providers, health plans, patients, and other agencies (such as home health agencies, or care management providers), the need to “review, sign, and send back” piles of daily orders would go away. The physician can review the proposed care plan in a more overall way, and all the “notification management” burden would go away – after all, the need to review, sign, and send back each step of a process is based on the presumption that every care provider is in a separate data silo and no information is shared. The regulatory environment which has driven these requirements are likely to change once the technological sharing platforms become a day-to-day reality.

(2) Effective patient engagement tools

Another way in which distractions from meaningful clinical practice can be reduced is by creating a new generation of effective self-management patient-facing dashboards (web apps, mobile apps, wearable device apps). EHR patient portals represent a first step in this direction, but suffer from the limitation of showing only what is known in a given clinician’s practice, and have limited utility – generally simply displaying test results, downloading health education resources, allowing scheduling, and providing a communication channel with the clinician. The patient is fairly passive in these processes, and does not help reduce the “notification overload” that clinicians face. In fact, it may add to it.

What we need is a new generation of self-service and self-management apps, which can automatically synthesize data from EHRs (of all one’s physicians and hospitals), self-entered or survey data, as well as consumer-facing device data (which currently reside in consumer-side silos). The AI-assisted Care Plan can be displayed in consumer-friendly ways that can encourage and guide progress towards the goals, and overcome barriers to adherence.

Of course, this presumes patients will want to become engaged in the apps that help monitor and guide their health. Many will do so, many others will not (until some crisis or event occurs). That’s OK. The tools need to be there, need to become something trusted that includes their physicians and others, and need to be automated in ways that reduce that needless “notification burnout” that clinicians face.

***

So, how do we overcome “notification overload” in healthcare? We need the right kind of tools. We need tools that can automate the complex interdisciplinary workflows that result in much of the notification burden. AI-assisted care plan creation, sharing platforms to involve all stakeholders (physicians, home health agencies, care coordinator nurses, patients, and health plans), are a part of the answer. Regulatory and policy changes (within institutions and within health plans) will be needed to facilitate this, once the tools are available. Integration with EHRs will help, though the role of EHRs will change – however, the fact is that physicians are in their EHRs all day and therefore the new generation of tools will need to be embedded in the EHRs that clinicians use.

We will also need better, more powerful patient/consumer engagement capabilities, which enable more active participation (beyond the passive connection which is currently the norm for EHR-associated patient portals). Again, AI-assisted synthesis of care plans, presented to patients in consumer-friendly ways, will be the long-term path. This new marketplace of apps will need the same sharing platform in order to reach its potential.

That is the future we see at Flow Health. That is why we are building the foundational sharing platform, the Operating System for Value Based Care, that is needed in order for the long-term solutions to our current dilemmas to emerge.

This post first appeared at HealthStandards.com.

TAGGED:EHRworkflow
Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

engineer fitting prosthetic arm
How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
Health care
August 20, 2025
a woman explaining the document
How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
Public Health
August 20, 2025
physiotherapist at work
How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
Health care
August 20, 2025
Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs
7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
Health News
August 20, 2025

You Might also Like

e interventions
BusinessFinanceHealth ReformPublic Health

Healthcare Progress Depends On “E Interventions”

July 10, 2014
eHealthHospital AdministrationMedical EducationMedical InnovationsMobile HealthNewsSocial MediaTechnology

Dealing With Negative Feedback on Your Hospital Social Media

November 12, 2011

Surgical Sealants and Glues in Wound Closure

November 4, 2014

Can Decision Aids Help Lower Medical Costs?

September 13, 2012
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?