It’s no secret that millions of healthcare workers have been pushed to the brink in the last few years. Today, over 50% of nurses and 20% of physicians report plans to leave their healthcare practice by the end of 2022, which will only deepen the significant labor shortages of healthcare professionals in the United States. Over the next three years, the U.S. anticipates the gap for health workers to rise to three million. 

Based on these statistics alone, you can see that healthcare worker burnout is a significant threat to the health and well-being of the general population — but it’s also a threat to the workers themselves. Burnout refers to work-related stress combined with physical and mental exhaustion from being overworked and dealing with a lack of support, which leads to reduced professional efficacy and cynicism. Below, we’ll assess how technology improves employee well-being by reducing the workload on staff and making it easier to deliver quality care to patients. 

How Prevalent Is Employee Burnout in Healthcare?

While many healthcare professionals likely experience some degree of burnout throughout their careers, research shows that the impact left by the COVID-19 pandemic is much more catastrophic than many realize. Though anyone can experience burnout, it is particularly prevalent in the healthcare industry. More than half of healthcare workers report symptoms of burnout along with anxiety, depression, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges.

One survey found that up to 69% of healthcare workers between the ages of 18 and 29 may experience burnout. This age group also reported the highest rates of negative mental health impact — about 75% — due to the pandemic, surpassing even the 62% of healthcare professionals who experienced at least some mental health repercussions. 

While these alarming rates continue to increase, healthcare workers were experiencing high levels of burnout even before the pandemic. The National Academies of Medicine (NAM) reported that healthcare burnout rose to problematic levels in 2019, with 35%-54% of nurses and physicians experiencing substantial symptoms of burnout. In 2018, a study of medical residents and students reported burnout rates of 44%. Going back even further to 2008, a study found that nurses in hospitals and nursing facilities reported burnout rates of 33% and 37%, respectively. 

In 2001, nearly two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, 43% of nurses working in U.S. hospitals suffered from emotional exhaustion, a leading symptom of burnout. Though burnout has increased significantly due to the demands of the pandemic, nurses, physicians and other healthcare staff have been battling this issue for decades. Simply put, burnout is not an individual issue — it’s a workplace issue that requires widespread, organizational-level solutions. 

What Causes Employee Burnout in Healthcare? 

Burnout tends to happen more often in healthcare than in any other occupation. While this mental and physical exhaustion is difficult enough to manage, it becomes even worse when healthcare workers don’t plan to reduce it or seek help. One of the first steps toward reducing burnout in healthcare, which benefits both workers and patients, is understanding how it occurs. 

Though there are dozens of organizational, economic, personal and social factors that can cause burnout, here are some of the leading causes:

• Insufficient wages: Seventy-three percent of healthcare professionals who graduated in 2021 in the U.S. currently have about $200,000 or more in student loan debt. High healthcare costs have made it challenging for many workers to earn a sufficient wage to pay off their loans, pay their bills on time and combat rising interest rates. 
• Long hours: Many healthcare workers work long hours. Compared to a typical work week of 40 hours, rates of work-related burnout double when these hours exceed 60 and triple when they exceed 74. Physicians, nurses, hospital staff and clinic professionals are more at risk for burnout the more overtime they put in. 
• Violence: Workplace aggression, violence and emotional abuse are highly prevalent in healthcare. Research shows that 8 in 10 health workers have been subjected to verbal or physical abuse. Numerous studies show that violence has a severe negative impact on workers’ mental health, and those who have experienced workplace violence have higher rates of stress and burnout.
• Staffing shortages: The healthcare labor shortage has become a widespread issue since nearly 1.5 million workers lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are reports that hundreds of thousands to millions of nurses, physicians, post-acute care providers and other healthcare professionals will be needed to meet the growing demand.
• Administrative burden: In addition to patient care, many healthcare workers are tasked with administrative duties, such as clinical documentation, note-taking and record-keeping, which can take up to an extra two hours per day to complete. One study demonstrated that for every hour spent with patients, healthcare professionals spend nearly two hours on electronic health record tasks.

What Is Millennia?

Between the growing labor shortages, increasing demand for staff and the high amount of administrative time many organizations face, your healthcare facility needs a better way to get everything completed. From scheduling the first appointment to settling the final payment, Millennia makes it possible to reduce frustrations surrounding administrative tasks while helping your organization focus on creating a better patient journey. 

Millennia is a complete, end-to-end solution with intelligent automation for the non-clinical side of healthcare. At Millennia, our three primary goals are:

• To build digital engagement 
• To increase revenue for providers
• To create better patient journeys in healthcare organizations

These three pillars are reflected in each of our solutions — Millennia Access, Millennia Recover and Millennia Complete. These tools work together in throughout the patient journey to make visits easier, faster and more efficient for patients and healthcare staff. Whether you manage a hospital, ambulatory facility, post-acute care facility or private practice, it’s important to prioritize patient usability and help your staff focus more on care by spending less time on administrative tasks, like billing. 

While our solutions can benefit your patients and help them maintain trust with your organization, our software also helps nurses, front-desk staff, physicians, healthcare administrators and other industry professionals complete their day-to-day tasks in a more efficient and productive manner. 

How to Liberate a Burned-Out Workforce With Millennia

If you want to know how technology improves productivity and eliminates manual tasks for employees, Millennia has the tools and solutions you need to see for yourself. We want to help healthcare organizations create a truly patient-centric experience while streamlining the clinical workflow so administrative staff, physicians, nurses and other employees can spend more time on patient care than dealing with tedious, repetitive manual tasks. 

Your healthcare workers are the number one factor impacting your facility and your patient’s experiences. With Millennia, you can relieve stress from your billing department and front-desk employees and make it easier for patients to interact and engage when and how it’s convenient for them. 

Instead of lines of people waiting to check in or pay their bill at the end of their visit, our Millennia Access, Millennia Recover and Millennia Complete solutions make it easy to streamline the patient journey, from pre-appointment scheduling to post-arrival tasks. 

Millennia’s Unified Patient Solutions Can Reduce the Burden on Your Employees

Healthcare worker burnout harms more than the individual. If not addressed, this crisis can make it more difficult for healthcare facilities to provide efficient, effective and quality care, while patients will struggle to get the treatment they need. With Millennia, you can access unified patient solutions that reduce manual processes, overdue payments and missing appointments while increasing revenue, patient satisfaction and omnichannel marketing flexibility. 

You know how technology promotes growth, but do you know it can also help maintain communication and engagement throughout the entire patient journey? With our Millennia Complete solution, you can access the pre-appointment scheduling features of Millennia Access and the post-arrival concierge technology of Millennia Recover in one convenient, scalable platform that easily integrates with your existing software. To learn how we can reduce employee burnout with our comprehensive solution, request a consultation today or view our success stories online. 

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