Reducing Clinician Burnout Through Clinical Decision Support That Actually Helps

Clinical decision support (CDS) alerts help protect patient safety, but continue to cause frustration for clinicians at hospitals and health systems. Community Health Network, a nine-hospital health system based in Indianapolis began remedying this problem in 2017 and was able to immediately reduce 12 million unnecessary alerts per year by retiring 6 and modifying 13. Yet CHN’s clinicians still faced 18 million alerts every year with only single-digit percentage levels of acceptance. CHN’s governance committee that was leading this optimization effort began a deeper analysis of its CDS rules using an analytics tool that more granularly depicted clinicians’ interactions with notifications and guidelines across numerous parameters. The health system used that information to tailor alerts to be more patient-specific based on clinical scenarios. As a result, CHN has reduced annual alert volume by more than 20 million since 2017 despite adding new hospitals and clinics. At the same time, CHN increased clinician acceptance of alerts by 33%. By delivering meaningful and actionable alerts at the appropriate time in the workflow, CHN clinicians can be more patient-focused to protect patient safety and improve outcomes while also decreasing alert fatigue and improving clinician experience.