As a physician, I’ve spent more than 15 years helping hospitals implement technology that has helped many clinicians deliver care more efficiently and effectively. One thing I’ve learned is this: clinicians rarely complain about technology because it’s digital. They complain because it gets between them and their patients.

Some of the biggest frustrations in healthcare don’t stem from medicine itself, or even from the technology we use. They come from the friction between the two.

That friction is often represented by a familiar object: the proverbial clipboard.

The challenge behind the clipboard

For the last year, CMS has been overseeing an industry-wide Health Tech Ecosystem initiative, an accelerated program prompting technology stakeholders to make fast progress on a number of goals specific to the exchange of health data outside of any regulatory construct. The one getting the most press—and one Altera Paragon has been pleased to support—has been an effort to “kill the clipboard” used by so many patients to repetitively share clinical backgrounds with their care providers in the absence of thorough and effective health information exchange infrastructure.

Many organizations, of course, don’t actually use a physical clipboard during patient registration, but that doesn’t negate the important point being made by CMS with the recent Kill the Clipboard initiative. The clipboard is simply the representation of something much larger.

For decades, patients have been expected to act as the connective tissue in a fragmented healthcare system. They carry their stories from one provider to another, repeatedly filling out forms, recounting their medical history, listing medications and hoping they remember everything important.

At its core, Kill the Clipboard recognizes that technology should make it possible for accurate, trusted information to be available where and when it’s needed—creating a better experience for patients and a more complete picture for clinicians.

Patients shouldn’t have to be the interoperability layer between healthcare organizations. CMS is correct that technology should do that work for them.

Providers face a similar challenge from the other side. Instead of beginning each encounter with a complete picture of the patient, they and their staff often spend valuable time searching multiple systems, reconciling records and doing their best to piece together the information needed to make informed decisions.

Technology should reduce the burden of exchanging clinical information—not add to it—and the exciting element of the Kill the Clipboard initiative is that it seeks to empower the most valuable sources for patient data with technology: the patients themselves.

One of the most powerful aspects of Kill the Clipboard is that it reduces the need for patients to navigate multiple technologies just to share their information. Instead of relying on paper forms, patient portals, or manually entering the same information over and over, the goal is to enable trusted information to move seamlessly between patients and their care teams.

Purpose that drives change

The challenges this initiative seeks to address, and the frustration those challenges create for both patients and clinicians, have been at the center of my work for years.

Healthcare organizations face significant administrative demands, and much of the innovation across our industry is understandably focused on meeting regulatory requirements and operational obligations. Those efforts are important, but opportunities like this are rare. What makes this effort especially meaningful is that it’s driven by a purpose larger than compliance or regulation.

Kill the Clipboard presents a chance to solve a problem that is both deeply practical and deeply human.

The need to address these challenges is relevant everywhere, but especially in the community, rural and critical access hospitals that Altera serves, where resources are limited and clinicians frequently see patients who have traveled to other providers outside of the area for a variety of reasons.

When pre-existing medical records can be shared by patients themselves and incorporated directly into the patient’s chart, clinicians spend less time hunting for information and more time delivering care. The clipboard isn’t eliminated by digitizing health data. It’s eliminated when clinicians already have the information they need before they even walk into the room.

Kill the Clipboard is about reducing patient frustration. It’s about improving care delivery. And it’s about ensuring the technologies we build truly support the clinicians, caregivers and patients who rely on them every day.

Supporting uninterrupted patient care

At Altera, we believe healthcare technology should simplify experiences, not complicate them. The goal is to create smarter, more connected systems that make healthcare easier to navigate and more effective for everyone involved.

The proverbial clipboard is currently a source of entirely avoidable friction in healthcare. When we remove that step in the process, patients spend less time repeating their story, clinicians and their staff don’t have to focus on searching for information, and ultimately, hospitals and physician providers can deliver better, more coordinated care.

That’s the future we’re building, and one we’re proud to help lead. Learn more about Paragon® Denali and our commitment to helping support uninterrupted patient care.