88% of clinical support staff suffer from severe burnout

The WELL Health study also reveals that nearly two-thirds have considered quitting their jobs; 82% note that the process of communicating with the patient directly causes burnout

Posted: October 14, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. MDT|Update: 44 minutes ago

SANTA BARBARA, California, October 14, 2021 / PRNewswire / – Well Health Inc., a SaaS digital health leader in patient communications and 2021 Best in KLAS winner in patient outreach, today announced the results of a new study of staff at clinical support, finding that the process of coordinating communication with patients is overwhelming. to the point of wanting to stop. According to the study, 88% of those surveyed report moderate to extreme exhaustion, with half (56%) rating their exhaustion as “high” or “extreme”.

Support staff are exhausted
The study interviewed 320 clinical support staff who are primarily responsible for communication and coordination with patients. Communication by telephone is the primary channel of communication with patients used by the support staff in this study. Among those interviewed:

• Almost two-thirds (63%) considered quitting because of the stress of communicating with patients.
• 82% believe that the process of communicating with the patient is a direct cause of their burnout.
• 96% say that communicating over the phone is their primary method of communicating with patients, indicating that the tedious and frustrating process is a huge problem.
• A majority of respondents (63%) report spending at least three hours a day communicating with patients, coordinating appointments, tracking and processing prescriptions.

As healthcare workers continue to battle physical and mental exhaustion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting and retaining talent is a top priority for healthcare providers. However, clinical support staff are responsible for the tedious and repetitive work that coordination and communication with patients often involves. The pandemic has added to their workload as they often have to coordinate COVID-19 care in addition to daily care operations, leading to dangerous burnout and frustration for support staff that can spill over to care. to patients. In fact, the WELL Health study found:

• 82 percent of support staff report being frustrated in communicating and coordinating with patients over the phone. More than half (54 percent) of this group indicated that their frustration is constant.
• Almost half (49%) say COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem.

Communication issues with patients impact the provider’s quality of care
It is not just the turnover of support staff that threatens provider organizations. The WELL Health study also found that clinical support staff burnout and ineffective communication with patients are seen to have a direct effect on the quality of patient care – something providers cannot afford to do. the era of value-based care.

With an increasing number of providers entering into risk-sharing agreements with payers, patient experience and quality of care have become key metrics related to reimbursement. The WELL Health study found that many support staff blame the problem of communicating with patients and, as a result, their burnout as negatively affecting the quality of care:

• 58 percent believe that staff burnout has negatively affected the quality of a patient’s care.
• 60 percent say that poor or ineffective communication with the patient has had a negative impact on a patient’s health outcomes.
• 63 percent say patients comment on burnout.

“The results of the study demonstrate that the quality of patient care is related to the way clinical support staff experience their work. The two go hand in hand,” said Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO and Founder of WELL Health. “That’s why our passion is for engineering technology that simplifies the work of staff by automating routine patient communication tasks, making staff more productive, efficient and happy. This, as the study shows, will directly lead to better health outcomes for patients. “

Mental health support staff report
According to the study, about 70 percent of clinical support staff reported their mental health issues to their supervisors, indicating that many are trying to be proactive. Additionally, while a majority of respondents noted that their organization’s leadership was trying to take certain actions, a surprising three in 10 said they went unnoticed, posing a significant risk to their provider organizations and their patients.

The study was commissioned by WELL Health and conducted by independent market research firm PureSpectrum, examining clinical support staff in primarily large provider organizations who are primarily responsible for communicating with patients. The PureSpectrum platform collects information via online non-probability samples collected from panels on the PureSpectrum marketplace. For more information on the PureSpectrum methodology, visit purrespectrum.com

The full WELL Health study is available here.

About Well Health Inc.
WELL â„¢ Health is a SaaS digital health leader in patient communications and the 2021 Best in KLAS winner in patient awareness. The WELL Health Smart Communication Hub is the only two-way digital health solution that engages patients throughout their care experience. WELL Health enables conversations between patients and their providers via secure, multilingual messaging (19 different languages) in the patient’s preferred communication channel: SMS, email, phone and live chat. WELL Health helps more than 200,000 providers deliver more than 1.1 billion messages to 37 million patients each year. By unifying and automating disjointed communications between healthcare organizations, WELL Health reduces unnecessary provider stress and potential errors, while increasing patient visits and loyalty.

Founded in 2015, WELL Health is based in Santa barbara, california. WELL Health was named # 10 in 2021 Forbes America List of Top Startup Employers, Best Workplaces 2020 by Modern Healthcare and ranked on Inc. 5000 list of Fastest Growing Private Companies for two consecutive years. WELL Health recently announced $ 45 million in Series C financing, bringing the total funds raised to $ 75 million since its creation in 2015.

For more information, visit https://wellapp.com.

WELL Health’s Role in COVID Vaccination Efforts
Since the COVID vaccine became available in United States, leading healthcare providers have used WELL Health communications technology to:

• Facilitate more than 8 million appointments for the COVID vaccine¹
• Send nearly 51 million COVID-related messages¹

¹Dataset of 12/09/2021 to 10/13/2021, pulled by WELL Health Data Insights.

Survey methodology
The survey was conducted by PureSpectrum, an independent market research platform that collects information via online non-probability samples collected from panels in the PureSpectrum Marketplace. For more information on the PureSpectrum methodology, visit purrespectrum.com.

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SOURCE Well Health Inc.

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