News Feature | November 25, 2014

Alert Fatigue Drives Clinician Turnover

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

MDM For Education Clients

EHR alerts can lead to decreased satisfaction and the stress may even lead to some providers considering a different career.

Health IT Outcomes reported on a study published earlier this year which found only 53 percent of all overrides were deemed appropriate. This led researchers to conclude “that refining the alerts could improve relevance and reduce alert fatigue” and “alert fatigue and other misuses of EHRs can cause serious problems.”

A more recent study, published in the American Journal of Managed Care, confirms that alerts cause stress for providers. The new study further finds this stress leads to low job satisfaction and, in some extreme cases, thoughts of career change. Researchers interviewed 2,600 Veterans Affairs primary care providers and asked how EHR alert practices affect provider satisfaction, provider perception of EHR alert value, intention to quit, and employee turnover.

Becker’s Hospital Review reports providers who saw little value in EHR alerts and became stressed by their frequency were significantly more likely to be dissatisfied and to leave their institutions. They also found monitoring and feedback collection associated with EHR use was a significant predictor of provider intention to quit.

“Our results suggest that [electronic alerts], and by extension EHRs, could become catalysts for turnover, unless providers clearly understand their value to delivering high-quality care effectively and efficiently,” explain the authors. “More importantly, when providers do not perceive the value of these electronic aids to their practice, they might become dissatisfied with their work environment, and potentially seek work elsewhere altogether.”

EHRs have been found to lower professional satisfaction by a RAND Corporation study as well. Their study discovered providers feel stress when EHRs force them to change their workflows and spend extra time on documentation. Forty-three percent of respondents said they feel their EHR system slows them down.