Optimizing clinical documentation in virtual hospitals: a task-technology fit perspective.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Digital Health
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Virtual hospitals rely entirely on digital tools for communication and care coordination, differing from traditional facilities.
• Existing clinical documentation improvement initiatives may not be suitable for virtual hospital settings.
• Understanding clinician experiences with technology in virtual care is crucial for optimizing documentation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine clinicians' documentation experiences in a virtual hospital setting.
• To identify effective initiatives for optimizing documentation processes in virtual care.
• To assess the suitability of current documentation practices for virtual hospital environments.

Main Methods:

• Focus groups and a co-design workshop were conducted with 28 nursing and medical staff.
• Qualitative data from focus groups were analyzed inductively and mapped to the task-technology fit framework.
• Thematic analysis was applied to digitized field notes from the co-design workshop.

Main Results:

• Clinicians experienced issues with data findability and concurrent use of multiple technologies, impacting efficiency and patient care time.
• Opportunities exist to streamline documentation through automated note generation, reduced free-text, and AI scribes.
• Strategies for optimizing virtual hospital escalation processes include removing extra layers and aligning with traditional hospital practices.

Conclusions:

• Documentation challenges in virtual hospitals are consistent with traditional settings but amplified by digital dependence.
• There is a need for integrated functionality supporting team-based virtual care.
• Policy, escalation processes, and clinical tasks require review before implementing new technologies like AI scribes to minimize documentation burden.