We all know that physician burnout is a real problem and the EHR gets a lot of the blame for that burnout. Well, the team at UC Davis Health decided to address this problem by creating a team focused on it. They called their team the Physician Efficacy Program or PEP for short. PEP was an interesting name for it since in many ways this team were a bunch of highly trained EHR cheerleaders that work with providers to help them work more efficiently in the EHR.
As a leading healthcare institution, we take physician burnout seriously. We want ALL who work in EMR to be successful and efficient. That is why the Physician Efficacy Program, or PEP squad, was launched in February 2018. #UGM2018 pic.twitter.com/4fn79u47d9
— UC Davis Health (@UCDavisHealth) August 29, 2018
How did this team work and what did they accomplish? UC Davis Health shared what they did and some of their results in these tweets below:
The PEP squad goes to a clinic for 3-6 week, doing a four hour, one-on-one training with each physician, creating Individualized Physician Efficacy Plans documenting training and follow-up, and holds "pep talks" with the entire clinic to discuss pain points. #UGM2018
— UC Davis Health (@UCDavisHealth) August 29, 2018
The results? In this small sample size and time frame, the team has helped reduce "pajama time", the time after a physicians regularly scheduled hours when they were still working on EMR. Each physician got back an estimated 25 hours per month! #UGM2018 pic.twitter.com/JHmi2ubZJa
— UC Davis Health (@UCDavisHealth) August 29, 2018
We recognize that this is just the beginning and that there is still work to be done. But these results show that with extra training, more efficient systems, and one-on-one support, we are helping address one of the main issues that leads to physician burnout. #UGM2018
— UC Davis Health (@UCDavisHealth) August 29, 2018
Those are some impressive results. I think every doctor would love to have 25 hours per month of their life back. I’m sure that some organizations that see this will wonder how their organization could afford to have a PEP team go around and train their physicians. At 25 hours per month saved per provider, the better question is how a healthcare organization can afford to not invest in a team like this.
Now we just need the team at UC Davis Health to share more details about what they did to achieve these efficiency gains. I wonder how many of them were individual tweaks and how many of them were broad system changes. How do we get all the experience and knowledge gained by the team at UC Davis Health to the rest of healthcare?