Healthcare IT burnout threatens efficiency and patient care
KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES — Healthcare IT teams worldwide are under increasing pressure from repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as password resets, access requests, and compliance reporting.
In a recent article for Healthcare IT Today, Promevo Chief Information Officer John Pettit highlights the silent struggle of IT professionals facing immense workload pressure, a critical issue often overshadowed by the focus on clinical burnout. This strain on healthcare IT teams poses a significant risk to operational efficiency and patient care, driving organizations to seek more intelligent workplace solutions.
“While clinical burnout gets most of the attention, the strain on IT is just as critical – and often overlooked,” writes Pettit.
Manual workflows drain healthcare IT resources
Whether it is onboarding travel nurses or offboarding employees, the manual processes take hours every week and put the focus on important security and innovation initiatives.
“High staff turnover and rotating roles, like travel nurses, make user management a constant task in healthcare. Managing these accounts manually across multiple systems is time-consuming and increases the risk of errors,” Pettit said.
Without automation, IT teams are locked in reactive cycles and cannot prioritize system improvements that improve patient care.
Delayed onboarding could result in clinicians not having access to crucial tools once their shift begins. Conversely, a lack of speed in offboarding could potentially expose inactive accounts to hacking. Producing just one compliance report may require dozens of hours in a quarter, generating significant stress.
Automated user management and audit logging solutions can help restore lost time, minimize weekly mistakes, and enable IT departments to focus on more critical tasks, eliminating the need to reinvent healthcare management from scratch.
Smarter workplace tools prevent IT burnout
Delegating administration privileges to department heads, such as nurse managers, for tasks like password resets can reduce IT backlogs on tickets.
Organizations that have granular control over permissions allow teams to independently resolve minor issues and expedite processes without compromising security. Such an approach offers the benefit of not only alleviating IT burdens but also helping build a more agile and responsive health care environment.
“For example, a nurse manager with password reset access or a unit lead with basic admin permissions can resolve simple issues on the spot without waiting in the IT queue. This capability saves time across workflows and helps reduce the mental strain on already stretched IT teams,” Pettit shared.
This approach also provides additional opportunities to mitigate risks by enhancing visibility of file ownership and patching. Most cloud infrastructures lack an intuitive way to track external data sharing, forcing IT to search for breaches manually.
Monitoring real-time tools and update schedules ensures that there are no last-minute concerns, which in turn provides the pertinent reporting.
With a responsible use of intelligent workplace solutions, healthcare organizations can protect data, simplify audits, and, ultimately, free their IT teams from the firefighting cycle, enabling organizations to grow sustainably.
