Workplace Efficiency and Function

OFFICE FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

Well-Being and Workplace Experience Core

We provide guidance and assist with a variety of programs to optimize workplace efficiency, recognizing the tight link between the ability to effectively complete your job and to derive meaning from your profession. We offer several initiatives for faculty across the Health System.

Faculty members can avail themselves of these programs and tools:

Epic Electronic Medical Record Optimization Program: This program aims to improve clinician and staff satisfaction, optimize clinical decision support, and increase revenue capture, all while adhering to regulatory and patient safety standards.
Epic Physician Builder Program: This effort provides selected physicians with training and certification in Epic's customization tools. Physician builders learn to create and modify order sets, documentation templates, dashboards, and clinical decision support tools with the Digital and Technology Partners (DTP) partnership. It also ensures that Epic meets the specific needs of clinicians while maintaining compliance with regulatory and organizational policies.
Epic Physician Champion Program: This program is designed for clinicians who advocate for Epic adoption and optimization. Physician champions facilitate training, promote best practices, and provide critical feedback to DTP teams regarding system usability. They act as liaisons between end users and the DTP department, ensuring that the Epic system aligns with clinical needs and enhances operational efficiency

Fluency Direct: This speech-to-text solution lets you create, edit, and sign clinical notes directly within Epic in real time. You navigate Epic by speaking into a microphone or smartphone rather than with a mouse. This approach increases provider satisfaction, improves documentation quality, works remotely, and provides cost savings. The expenses involved are:

- License: $595 per year per user
- Hardware: $300 per microphone (free mobile app available)
- Training: Peak training available for $216 per hour for an M*Modal trainer

Dragon Copilot: This dictation product uses artificial intelligence to generate electronic health record encounter note entries during doctor visits. It records visits on your smartphone, distinguishes between provider and patient voices, extracts key concepts from the transcript, and generates notes. You can then review, edit, and sign the notes. If you are interested in this product, please reach out to your practice, divisional and/or department leadership as Mount Sinai will distribute licenses through departments and practices.
Committees, Grants, and Initiatives: These include:
- Epic InBasket Management Committee: Our office provides guidance to this committee within DTP to help improve the InBasket management experience for faculty and, in turn, their patients.
- REDuCE Electronic Health Record and Clinical Burden Reduction Grants: Our grant program, offered on a periodic basis, supports innovations that improve team efficiency, optimize electronic record functioning, and enhance team communications.
  
  Previous grantees include 16 recipients from various departments across five cycles from 2020 to 2025. Most grants focused on either hiring staff to reduce physician workload or creating electronic health record and workflow optimizations. Examples include hiring patient coordinators to manage calls, employing medical assistants to triage portal requests, and developing new workforce health resources templates and express lanes for pediatric visits.
  
  Funded projects have demonstrated measurable impact. For example, a geriatrics “in-basket” coordinator project reduced physician call-center messages by 23 percent and improved physician well-being, and an oncology registry project streamlined prior authorizations, yielding an estimated $7 million in cost savings.
  
  Some of these initiatives have been sustained through departmental and Health System-level support and expanded across sites. An in-basket triage pilot, for instance, has grown from three sites to more than 60 ambulatory locations through collaboration with DTP and the faculty practice. Grantees have also shared their work at national meetings, submitted manuscripts for publication, and earned additional funding to study outcomes.
  
  Email owbr@mssm.edu for more information.