The Complete Guide
Physicians have one of the most respected professions, not only in the United States but around the world. They have even taken an oath to solidify their commitment to helping people feel better when they’re sick, offering advice on preventing illness, providing recommendations for treating acute and chronic diseases and much more.
Accomplishing all this isn’t done quickly, though. Physicians work an average of 51 hours per week. In addition to focusing on patient care, they’re responsible for ordering and interpreting diagnostic tests, prescribing medications, updating medical charts, counseling on proper nutrition and hygiene and collaborating with other clinicians to ensure continuity of care. Most spend about 1.5 hours online daily conducting research because it’s crucial they’re informed about new or changing medications or treatments, procedures and diagnoses and educated on issues affecting the healthcare and insurance industries.
Not surprisingly, this heavy load of responsibility leads to burnout for a high number of physicians. Many doctors in the U.S. report burnout at rates two times greater than non-physician working adults. Studies show that, compared to other professionals, doctors disproportionately struggle with work-life balance and report symptoms of burnout and even severe emotional exhaustion.
The American Medical Association defines physician burnout as long‑term stress reaction characterized by depersonalization. With so many hours spent in the office and on-call, both day and night, doctors often take little time to focus on their well-being. Tragically, an estimated 300-400 physicians each year commit suicide.
A study surveying more than 3,700 physicians in nearly every specialty, work setting and region of the U.S. found that although more than half of respondents reported that their workload had impacted their mental health, only 17 percent have sought help, a mere 16 percent have considered meeting with a mental health professional and approximately 66 percent said they would not consider meeting with one at all. Individuals in this profession are less likely to seek treatment for burnout due to fear of licensure problems, the “physician personality,” a programming to cope alone, survival mentality and a “self-doubt, imposter syndrome.”
This problematic issue might be one of the reasons fewer Americans are going into the field of medicine. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of up to 105,000 doctors by 2030, including an estimated 43,000 in primary care.
Being a physician is a demanding job. It consists of long hours, high stress and very little room for error. No matter the specialty, even the most experienced doctors are encumbered with the pressure of numerous responsibilities that affect their patients’ physical and mental well-being. From attempting to negotiate a work-life balance and dealing with sometimes unsatisfactory leadership to handling an assortment of administrative tasks, these respected professionals face a wide array of issues that often contribute to physician burnout.
As Dike Drummond, M.D., an author, speaker and consultant on the topic of physician burnout, so accurately explained, “Our practice is the classic high-stress combination of great responsibility and little control. This stress is inescapable as long as you are seeing patients, no matter what your specialty.” As Dr. Drummond notes, the practice of clinical medicine is one of the only causes of burnout most physicians learn to cope with in their training
Some clinicians posit that nearly all physicians will experience burnout at some point in their career due to the inherently and overtly stressful nature of the profession. Others assert that the goals of the IHI Triple Aim won’t be achieved until a fourth one focusing on physician wellness is added. Neither argument is constructive to physicians if the primary causes of physician burnout are not addressed.
Doctors have 24-hour days and seven-day weeks. It’s a busy career with multiple roles and a high level of accountability. Add a personal life to the mix, and the result is more responsibility to fit into a jam-packed schedule.
Many physicians carry a heavy financial debt from medical school, are required to be on-call at least some evenings and weekends and must occasionally travel to medical conferences for continuing education. These duties are amplified during a natural disaster or disease outbreak such as COVID-19. Confronting sometimes unrealistic clinical productivity goals only adds another layer of stress.
Though physicians are probably one of the professions most in need of time off, the majority of them disclose that they sometimes or rarely have time for themselves. Generation X physicians and millennials report higher instances of rarely -- or never -- having time for themselves. Countless doctors don’t even get the recommended seven-to-nine hours of sleep per night, risking possibly harmful effects of sleep deprivation, including impaired language and math skills, impaired ECG interpretation and increased error rates in an intensive care unit.
Read more: 3 Ways for Physicians to Find Work-Life Balance
Although the transition to value-based care is designed to enhance financial and clinical performance through provider incentives, the guidelines and requirements that accompany it often add another layer of work for physicians. The approximately 1,700 Quality Measures implemented by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the goal of effective, safe, efficient, patient-centered, equitable and timely care require extensive documentation.
Combined with guidelines from incentive programs such as the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and regulations from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), physicians encounter excessive paperwork and multiple administrative tasks – all of which detract from time they spend with their patients. Almost half a doctor’s work day is spent on administrative work, while only 27 percent is spent on direct clinical care. For each hour of clinical face time they spend with patients, an additional two are filled with administrative and clerical tasks.
The following physician burnout statistics point to the seemingly disproportionate demand of administrative work on clinicians:
Another function physicians must fulfill is handling payer issues. Many payers require detailed documentation for reimbursement, and accurate documentation is necessary for full and timely payment. One study reported that approximately half of clinicians and healthcare executives want the emphasis of organizational interventions designed to decrease physician burnout to focus on documentation requirements from payers. Similarly, research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine maintained that enacting regulatory reform for fewer documentation requirements for doctors would improve accuracy, enable better use for research and help decrease overall physician burnout.
Technology has played an increasingly large role in the healthcare industry over the past couple decades and continues to offer a myriad of benefits to physicians and other healthcare professionals. Designed to streamline workflow, reduce administrative burden and improve patient care, it also may increase stress for physicians, especially when poorly designed.
Clinicians waste an average of 45 minutes per day by utilizing outdated communication technologies. This lack of interoperability and productivity costs hospitals in the U.S. more than $8.3 billion annually. In addition to physician burnout, it also results in waste and inefficiency. Electronic health record (EHR) systems specifically contribute to physician burnout as evidenced by these numbers from a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA):
Many symptoms of physician burnout surface slowly, an accumulation of factors over months and years. Team members and other colleagues might not notice anything different, at least not immediately. However, symptoms of burnout in physicians can lead to some serious consequences in a profession in which mistakes can be very costly.
It’s important to remember that burnout can occur in other healthcare professionals, too. More than 15 percent of all nurses have reported feelings of burnout, and approximately 18 percent of hospital nurses exhibit signs of depression. The consequences of burnout among nurses include increased turnover rates, poor job performance and threats to patient safety.
Defined as a state of feeling worn-out and drained from an accumulation of stress from personal or work lives (or a combination of both), emotional exhaustion is a leading sign of burnout. It often consists of feelings of being overextended and having no more emotional and physical resources left to offer.
Numerous studies have shown that 25-60 percent of physicians across numerous specialties report exhaustion. Emotionally-exhausted physicians sometimes express a negative, cynical and/or hostile attitude toward patients and may treat them as objects instead of human beings. Note the following signs of emotional exhaustion in physicians which can assist you in identifying it in team members:
Individuals often select a physician based on online and word-of-mouth recommendations. A doctor known for his or her good bedside manner is probably going to procure more new patients than a one perceived as distant and impolite.
Encountering a physician with a negative, cynical or impersonal attitude toward patients, family, staff members and colleagues doesn’t necessarily mean that doctor is just plain rude. His or her behavior might be a result of depersonalization, a common symptom of physician burnout. Also known as “compassion fatigue,” it signals a void of emotional energy and is sometimes expressed as unprofessional comments directed toward co-workers, blaming patients for their medical problems or the inability to express empathy or grief when a patient dies.
A lack of efficacy, which is less common in men, refers to a feeling of incompetence or low sense of personal accomplishment. Physicians who lack efficacy often doubt the quality or meaning of their work, which contributes to a loss of self-confidence. Whether real or imagined, lack of efficacy also can negatively affect a physician’s productivity.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults age 18 and older. According to the journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth, the high demands and inherent uncertainty in the practice of medicine added to environmental causes and conditions may contribute to excessive worry, a core aspect of anxiety disorders.
A study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine -- one of the few that have examined anxiety as a component of burnout -- found that doctors who experienced increasing anxiety and withdrawal were more than three times as likely to report burnout compared to those who didn’t experience high levels of these issues. The study also noted that primary care physicians (PCPs) experience more burnout and anxiety than other healthcare professionals, which could likely worsen from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
Depression is much more common among physicians than other professions. The onset of depression starts early for physicians, as about half of medical students experience burnout and one percent experience suicidal ideation during school. Among residents training in general surgery, the rate of depression approaches 40 percent.
In the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2020, about two thirds of surveyed respondents reported “colloquial” depression. However, about one percent have attempted suicide, almost 25 percent reported thoughts of suicide and a large percentage have not spoken to anyone about their thoughts of suicide. About half of the respondents reported that depression gets expressed in some way in their interaction with patients.
Physicians are busy professionals.Their busy routine begins in medical school with rotating shifts, long hours and on-call duty. Therefore, physicians of any age or specialty may endure sleep deprivation, irregular sleep patterns and circadian misalignment.
Symptoms of sleep deprivation include slowed thinking, reduced attention span, worsened memory, poor or risky decision-making, lack of energy and mood changes. A persistent lack of sleep creates significant risks to physical and mental health, a consequence that for physicians and their patients could be fatal.
Sleep disturbance is a predictor of depression, and insufficient sleep may contribute to the development of burnout. As noted in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, excessive documentation required for reimbursement increases work burden, limits sleep opportunity through longer work hours and increases the homeostatic drive for sleep related to prolonged cognitive demand.
Substance abuse has long been acknowledged to cause physician impairment. Compared to nine percent of the general population, physicians report rates of substance and alcohol abuse between 10-15 percent. Though the substance most commonly abused by the general population is alcohol, doctors have a higher rate of prescription drug abuse.
One study found that almost 70 percent of physicians abused prescriptions to “relieve stress and physical or emotional pain.” Multiple other studies reported that there is a markedly higher risk of suicide and alcohol use disorder in physicians suffering from burnout.
It’s probably not a stretch to presume that emergency department physicians experience high levels of stress on the job. Not only do they often work alternating day and night shifts and see patients with a large variety of injuries and illnesses, they also administer care to those whose conditions typically require more immediate treatment.
Approximately 6,000 emergency physicians contemplated suicide in 2018, and almost 400 attempted it. This was before the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many frontline healthcare workers were faced with long shifts, uncertain treatment plans and shortages of personal protective equipment. Nurses especially have had a relatively high prevalence of burnout during the pandemic.
Within just the past five years, multiple specialties have published review articles addressing burnout within their respective fields. For the past few years, Medscape has published a report highlighting survey information on both physician burnout and suicide. Over the past five years, specialties that have reported the highest level of physician burnout include critical care, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology and urology.
According to the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2020, the medical specialties in which the highest number of doctors disclosed symptoms of burnout include:
The American Urological Association notes that the average urologist in the United States works 56 hours per week. A previous study suggests that the high burnout rate among urologists might be due to long working hours, the burden of the electronic medical record and pressure from competition to see an ever-larger number of patients.
Factors affecting radiologist burnout consist of turnaround time pressures, ever-increasing imaging volumes, declining reimbursements per study, isolation in the work environment, changes in the market and perceived livelihood threats from technological advances. Although nephrology is number three on the Medscape list, it increased from 32 to 49 percent over the past year.
The lowest rates of physician burnout were reported in the following medical specialties:
The effects of physician burnout go far beyond exhausted and/or unhappy clinicians. If you don’t properly address the reason(s) for your burnout, personal and professional consequences may occur.
No matter the cause(s), physician burnout can be costly for the healthcare industry and even patients. It puts doctors at increased risk of motor vehicle accidents and near-miss events, even after adjusting for fatigue. It also has been directly linked to an array of problems, including decreased patient satisfaction and care quality, physician alcohol and drug abuse and addiction and high medical error rates, malpractice risk and physician and staff turnover.
Johns Hopkins University researchers estimate that medical error is the third-leading cause of death, accounting for 251,454 deaths in the U.S. per year. One nationwide survey found that most Americans are having positive experiences with the healthcare system, but 21 percent of adults have personally experienced a medical error.
There is an immense amount of evidence that suggests physician burnout is associated with increased medical errors. A study published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that physician burnout, fatigue and work unit safety grades were independently associated with major medical errors. Another study, this one by the Stanford University School of Medicine, reported that physician burnout is at least equally responsible for medical errors as unsafe medical workplace conditions, if not more so. If you’re a doctor who reports signs of burnout, you are twice as likely to have made a medical error in the previous three months.
Pursuing a career in medicine puts you at increased risk of suicide. Specifically, suicidal ideation has also been associated with occupation-specific factors, including:
Mental health issues such as depression, substance abuse, self-destructive tendency and guilty self-concept are associated with physician suicide, but some research shows that burnout without depression does not increase suicide risk and can therefore be safely addressed outside of mental health care.
According to the American Medical Association (AMA), physician burnout costs the U.S. approximately $4.6 billion each year through physician turnover and reduced clinical hours: an average cost per employee of $7,600 annually and $500,000 to more than $1 million per doctor. It doesn’t, however, take into account the expenses and other resources necessary to recruit doctors and other clinicians or intangible costs like lost productivity, decreased quality of work and increased competition due to turnover from departing physicians. Although these factors might not seem to affect you personally, they negatively affect the healthcare industry as a whole.
If you’re a doctor who has felt unable to safely and effectively carry out the core responsibility of patient care, you’re not alone. Though the official term for is physician impairment, it’s an issue that’s not usually openly discussed due to stigma or fear of disciplinary, career-affecting consequences. Regardless, ignoring signs of impairment puts you, your patients and even your colleagues at increased risk for dangerous outcomes.
Physician impairment can be caused by burnout as well as exhaustion, mental illness or a decline in cognitive or motor skills due to age or disease, but the most commonly studied source is substance abuse disorders. Some doctors experiencesleep-related impairment due to long work hours, sometimes resulting in burnout and self-reported, clinically-significant medical error. The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) recommends that any impaired physician proactively and voluntarily refrain from the practice of medicine. Colleagues who notice impairment in a physician should intervene to ensure that doctor doesn’t practice until no longer impaired.
If you’ve never been sued for malpractice, consider yourself fortunate. More than half of physicians have been sued for malpractice, with some specialties reporting a more than 80 percent litigation rate. Almost all doctors who practice in a high-risk specialty will be sued by the age of 65. It’s no wonder that physician burnout is associated with malpractice suits.
Most physicians sued for malpractice report major psychological and/or physical effects from the litigation. Enter Medical Malpractice Stress Syndrome (MMSS). Similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it’s the emotional and traumatic experience doctors endure when being sued. An aggravating factor in MMSS is the stigma associated with a malpractice suit, often resulting in anxiety and depression, fatigue and emotional exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, irritability, changes in appetite and libido, apathy, anger and feelings of shame and guilt.
It’s no surprise that patients who receive care from a physician experiencing burnout don’t typically report high levels of satisfaction with their doctor. Lower patient satisfaction is almost a foregone conclusion to poor quality of care. However, physician burnout also can affect your personal well-being as a doctor through low job satisfaction.
In research on the link between physician burnout and patient satisfaction, patients of doctors with high levels of exhaustion and depersonalization had significantly lower satisfaction scores and longer post-discharge recovery time. A major study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that in addition to being three times more likely to receive low satisfaction ratings from patients, physicians with burnout are twice as likely to be involved in patient safety incidents and deliver suboptimal care to patients, owing to low professionalism.
As a physician, you’re tasked with numerous responsibilities while under pressure to improve the quality of care you provide to your patients. You’re required to complete extensive documentation and perform other administrative duties, all while seeing patients. Additionally, the increased bottom-line pressure means patient visits are often brief. The problem is that the more stress you encounter on the job, the more that care is likely to suffer.
Physician burnout has been proven to result in overall worse outcomes, including twice the odds of involvement in patient safety incidents. When depersonalization leads to poor interactions with your patients, you’re apt to suffer from impaired attention, memory and executive function. Even if you know you’re experiencing symptoms of burnout and keep working, you’re more likely to have decreased work productivity, exhaustion and poor quality of care when compared to earlier in your career.
Multiple empirical studies have found that physicians with burnout are more likely to fail on critical aspects of professionalism that determine the quality of patient care, such as adherence to treatment guidelines, quality of communication and empathy. If you experience symptoms of depression along with burnout, you’re at risk for more pronounced safety risks.
Treatment for physician burnout doesn’t come in a one-size-fits-all solution. There are no interventions that immediately produce results. However, there are a myriad of small steps you can take to improve your well-being, even if it requires you to do some things differently.
As the AAFP notes, understanding the drivers of physician burnout informs the ongoing development of intervention models to prevent it as well as the support services to help you cope with the symptoms. Successful interventions -- those that take into account the broad range of causes and incorporate a variety of different therapeutic tools -- have been found to decrease overall burnout symptoms by 10 percent, emotional exhaustion by 14 percent and depersonalization by four percent.
No matter the reason(s) for your burnout, do not be hesitant to ask for help, whether it’s from a colleague, friend or professional. Even if you have to take seemingly simple actions such as scheduling time with friends and family or no longer working with a payer that causes you a lot of administrative stress, taking the first step in addressing the issue of burnout is essential to overcoming it.
Confronting burnout is not all the responsibility of physicians. Researchers have found that organizational interventions have the highest potential to ease burnout and that the organization by whom you’re employed and the environment in which you practice play critical roles in whether you remain engaged or burnout. Similarly, organizational interventions that address physicians' workloads, schedules, supervision and job control have shown a larger benefit in overall burnout than those focused on the individual.
Acknowledging the existence of burnout in an organization and offering resources to assist physicians and other healthcare staff affected by it is essential. The leadership behaviors of physician supervisors play a critical role in the well-being of the physicians they lead, so a lack of support on this level may result in unnecessary, exacerbated stress in doctors.
Conversely, positive effects occur if administrators allocate time for physicians to incorporate teamwork, mindfulness, sharing of workload through Patient-Centered Medical Home models and coaching for challenging experiences. Research has found increased job satisfaction among physicians when their department leaders:
Some in the healthcare industry recommend implementing physician burnout as a top metric to monitor. Even if that’s not done, organizations should ensure support of proactive mental health treatment for their employees and not penalize them for experiencing burnout. As a physician, you should have access to comprehensive resources to address work-life integration, exercise/fitness, sleep habits, diet, personal financial health, relationships, hobbies and preventive medical care.
If you’re a physician employed by a health system, hospital or large practice, you have a built-in support network with whom to discuss issues such as burnout and its causes. If not, it’s important to seek out peers or mentors you trust as for support.
If you’re concerned about a lack of privacy with colleagues, consider forming or joining an already established group of physicians who meet regularly to discuss issues affecting your career. The Mayo Clinic found that giving physicians a way to gather in small groups for semi-structured, private discussions in restaurants, coffee shops or reserved rooms results in measurably lower burnout and social isolation and higher well-being and job satisfaction.
Another readily available option is social media. More than 90 percent of physicians are involved in social media for personal or professional use. Connecting with peers on these platforms enables you to not only share expertise and solutions to ease stress but also learn from successful physician burnout solutions and programs that already have been implemented.
You can’t offer quality care to patients if you’re not properly taking care of yourself. As a physician, you already know the importance of exercise, a balanced diet and sufficient sleep. Whether or not you heed your own advice on these topics can make a noticeable difference in how burnout affects you.
Taking care of yourself also can come in the form of making time for your family and friends, participating in fulfilling hobbies such as golf or yoga or seeking counseling. It might involve utilizing breathing techniques for release of stress or attending stress management training.
Multiple clinical trials have highlighted mindfulness as an effective treatment for burnout. The American Association for Physician Leadership defines mindfulness as a way of remaining in the present while processing unfolding events and feelings in a compassionate and nonjudgmental way. Studies have found that mindfulness training has resulted in sustained reductions in depressive symptoms, stress and burnout scores and increased physician well-being and patient-centered qualities.
Multiple technologies have been developed and implemented to make workflows more efficient, enable continuity of care and simplify the job of a physician. However, not all of them have achieved that; instead, they’ve added more administrative tasks to your already busy schedule. The result? Increased stress and burnout.
The best technology solutions should let you automate much of your routine processes, promote connected care and foster teamwork and collaboration. For example, mobile technologies allow you to easily access patient information and other data and discuss care plans with other physicians without being tied to a computer. Telehealth technology, used more often in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, helps improve workflows by reducing administrative tasks and providing access to clinical decision support.
According to the AMA, physicians who are satisfied with different applications of information technology were four times more likely to be happy with their medical practice. Eight out of nine studies found that changes to workflow redesign, including targeted quality improvement projects and separating workflows, had a substantial impact on physician burnout and job satisfaction. When developed with physicians in mind, technology improves quality of care, not hinders it.
When you decided to become a physician, you knew you’d probably be working long hours. That doesn’t mean an excessive workload doesn’t negatively affect you.
No one can work long hours with little sleep and a lot of stress for months on end without experiencing some type of burnout. Half of the physicians in the Medscape National Physician Burnout and Suicide Report 2020 disclosed that they would give up at least $20,000 in annual income in order to reduce their work hours.
Setting realistic expectations of your role in providing quality care while maintaining a work-life balance is non-negotiable if you want to escape physician burnout. If you have any flexibility over your work schedule, use it. If not, consider employing a schedule in which you begin or end your workday earlier to make more time for personal or family responsibilities or obligations.
Working in a multi-provider practice, hospital or health system should enable you to more easily implement a more flexible schedule. Attempt to delegate any non-physician tasks to support staff, especially administrative duties. Additionally, your employer should establish realistic and fair productivity targets, so you’re not burning yourself out only to attain some unrealistic metric.
Many physician associations and organizations offer a variety of resources on ways to reduce burnout. Most are free of cost to members of these groups. You might also consider joining a local chapter of one of these organizations to meet peers with whom to discuss issues related to physician burnout. Notable resources to assist physicians with burnout include:
American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL): With Mindfulness 101, AAPL offers an overview of how mindfulness is connected to physician burnout and provides some mindfulness exercises and meditations.
Although some technologies can add another layer of responsibility for you, solutions designed to fit your workflow can positively affect your job satisfaction. A study co-written by one of the American Medical Association’s (AMA) leaders on professional satisfaction found that doctors who were satisfied with different applications of information technology were four times more likely to be happy with their medical practice.
Effective physician burnout solutions should reduce your stress, not increase it. They also should be secure and HIPAA-compliant to ensure you’re not hit with costly penalties and fines. Failing to secure protected health information (PHI) also can result in a damaged reputation and decreased patient satisfaction and trust.
Many physicians have access to a practice manager, whose role according to the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) is to manage all aspects of a medical practice, including financials, human resources, information technology, compliance, marketing and operations. The goal of this staff member is to enhance patient care, ensure day-to-day operations of the practice run smoothly, and alleviate administrative burden on the physician(s).
If you’re employed in a small practice or own your own practice, chances are you don’t have a practice manager. That’s where practice management software comes in handy. Designed to help you perform an array of financial and administrative functions, this type of solution lets you focus more of your time on patient care.
In addition to enhancing the efficiency of your clinical workflow, practice management software enables your practice staff to quickly and easily capture patient demographics, schedule appointments, perform billing procedures, conduct authorization and referral management, increase reimbursement from payers, communicate electronically with patients and other providers, generate comprehensive reports, comply with ever-changing healthcare industry regulations and requirements, store documents electronically and more. Most practice management systems also integrate with electronic health records (EHRs).
By reducing wait times and improving patient security, practice management software also boosts patient satisfaction. It gives you the ability to instantly access patient records and make informed decisions with the benefit of their medical history at your fingertips.
Although it’s not a new technology, telehealth is increasingly being utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic to treat patients without requiring them to leave their homes. Even before the novel coronavirus outbreak hit the United States, approximately 76 percent of U.S. hospitals used telehealth to connect with patients and consulting practitioners from a distance.
Although telehealth often is used interchangeably with the term “telemedicine,” it consists of basic telecommunication tools, including phone calls, text messages and emails, which enable patients to communicate with their providers. Conversely, telemedicine consists of remote clinical services through technologies such as remote patient monitoring and live videoconferencing.
Research has shown that telehealth interventions produce positive outcomes when used for remote patient monitoring, broadly defined, for several chronic conditions and for psychotherapy as part of behavioral health. Some patients even prefer telehealth over in-office appointments. Patients have reported that their concerns were resolved 85 percent of the time through telemedicine visits compared to 64 percent for in-office appointments.
Commonly used in the medical fields of dermatology, urology, chronic disease, intensive care and mental health, telehealth allows physicians to connect virtually with other clinicians. Other advantages include 24/7 access to healthcare, increased medication adherence, improved emergency care, promotion of population health initiatives, enhanced value for payers and advanced delivery of public health services.
Many telehealth solutions used in the healthcare industry in the United States are mobile, allowing you to connect with patients anywhere instead of being required to stay at the office. Telehealth technology aids in fostering collaboration and teamwork, reducing the burden of chronic disease management on both you and your patients and addressing work capacity and coverage management issues.
Some physicians split their schedule between in-office consultations and telehealth, saving commuting time and contributing to more of a work-life balance. If you’re experiencing burnout, consider using telehealth to virtually connect and network with your peers and colleagues to discuss practical and proven solutions to reduce stress and more efficiently care for your patients. The best option is a telehealth solution that mirrors your in-office workflow. The technology can even provide you with access to mental health professionals, offering both convenience and confidentiality.
According to the American Medical Association (AMA), a patient’s perception of the quality of the healthcare they receive is highly dependent on the quality of the communication with their health care team. Plus, as patients perceive physicians and staff as more insightful and caring through better communication, outcomes also improve.
Technology tools that provide you with streamlined communication not only improve care but also decrease the risk for medical error. However, they must be designed and implemented with both you and your patients in mind. It’s important that they offer actionable data directly at points-of-care and reduce the number of administrative tasks for which physicians and staff are responsible.
Through the use of digital communication tools to promote patient engagement, you can lower your administrative burden by putting documentation in your patients’ hands. Many patients want to be more involved in their own care, anyway.
For example, you can utilize digital check-in to streamline the check-in process, decrease wait times and reduce the workload of your front-office and clinical staff. Your patients can use a personal smartphone, from home or in the office, to verify their insurance, sign consent forms and authorization releases, verify or update clinical information and more, all of which updates in real-time with your patient’s electronic record. The MGMA Research & Analysis Report: Optimization of Healthcare Technology to Improve Patient Engagement found that “implementing check-in technologies that make sense for a practice’s unique patient demographics…and can reduce the administrative burdens and delays of processing paperwork and simultaneously improve patient experience.”
Patient services is another helpful tool for physicians because it allows practices to communicate the availability of meaningful services that are helpful to both patients and providers. It also gives providers the ability to present meaningful services to patients from best-in-class partners. Plus, it can be presented within the check-in workflow, making it easily accessible to patients.
Approximately 70 percent of physicians e-prescribe because it offers safer and more cost-effective care through reduced medication errors and improved patient medication adherence. This technology makes it easier to get orders quickly and safely to your patient’s preferred pharmacy, access information on insurance coverage and track whether or not your patients, especially those with a chronic disease, have picked up their next refill.
Through e-prescribing, you have easy access to your patients’ documented allergies, helping to reduce hospital readmissions from adverse reactions to drugs. Most e-prescription technologies provide you with an alert of any newly prescribed drug with a potential for a negative reaction and give you eligibility, formulary and medication history in real time, providing you with visibility to lower-cost alternatives that can enhance overall cost effectiveness for your patients.
Encouraging your patients to play a more active role in their healthcare can result in multiple advantages. Patients who are fully engaged in their care are more likely to maintain treatment plans, track their health and ask their providers questions. Other benefits include reduced costs, increased communication and streamlined population health as well as patient loyalty.
As a provider, you can promote engagement by educating and informing your patients about their healthcare through regular communication, clear information on conditions and treatment options, recommendations for preventive care and regularly updated medication lists. Research has shown that a high percentage of patients seek providers who employ technology that offers digital scheduling, online payment options, portal and engagement capabilities and results reporting tools.
A report from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) on the optimization of healthcare technology to improve patient engagement listed some of the top solutions as patient portals, automated appointment reminder systems, check-in technologies, telehealth, digital payment options and data analytics. Correspondingly, a study conducted by Health Affairs found that patients who received enhanced decision-making support with their healthcare had overall medical costs that were 5.3 percent lower than those receiving only the usual support and experienced 12.5 percent fewer hospital admissions.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines mHealth as the use of mobile and wireless devices to improve health outcomes, healthcare services and health research. Although improved quality and continuity of care is the number one reason for physician adoption of mHealth, other benefits include increased productivity, improved data accuracy, enhanced physician-patient communication, easier access to data and improved ability to reach patients in remote locations.
mHealth can help you achieve the IHI Triple e Aim by improving your patients’ experience and the well-being and resilience among your care team. It also enables your patients to more conveniently engage in telehealth and communicate with you for improved chronic care management.
Even if you provide the highest quality of care of any physician on the planet, you’re not going to be properly reimbursed for it without accurate medical billing. Tools that provide electronic charge capture and automated medical billing:
They also give you the ability to use the data to calculate and track your RVUs, which often are factored into your compensation and demonstrate your value to your employer.
Your practice can improve operational efficiency by using medical billing software to automate a variety of administrative tasks, from conducting patient registration and verifying insurance coverage to collecting patient payments and generating, scrubbing and submitting claims. Automation identifies billing errors prior to a claim being submitted, resulting in cleaner claims that get paid quicker by payers and decreased delays and denials in reimbursement.
Many medical billing solutions offer mobile bill pay for patients, enabling physician practices to increase their collection rate and boost their revenue cycle. This type of technology also helps decrease collection fees, reduce administrative time and increases payment contract enrollment.
Newer AI-based medical billing software solutions help medical billers identify mistakes, fix codes, improve documentation and avoid duplicate charges. Integrating this technology with EHR software provides even more advantages, including in-depth reporting capabilities, the ability to perform digital payment processing via patient portals, improved efficiency by removing the need to fax or photocopy every billing sheet and enhanced comprehensiveness through the ability to access data from a single location.
Physicians aren’t the only clinicians who experience burnout. Nurse burnout, defined as a chronic response to work-related stress composed of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment, costs the U.S. healthcare system $14 billion annually, which includes $9 billion for hospitals alone.
A reported 15.6 percent of all nurses have reported feelings of burnout, higher levels of which are associated with higher rates of both patient mortality and dissemination of hospital-transmitted infections. Nurse burnout often is due to understaffed hospitals, fatigue, a chronic lack of sleep and feelings of being constantly overworked but unappreciated.
The following statistics on nurse burnout identify some of its causes:
If you’re a nurse experiencing burnout, attempt to practice self-care, maintain a regular exercise routine, eat a well-balanced diet, use paid time-off and vacation, foster strong co-worker relationships and regulate your shift schedule as much as possible to include work days of no longer than nine hours. Take advantage of any mental health services your employer offers, and don’t hesitate to seek outside professional help.
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is certainly doing nothing to quell the problem of burnout experienced by physicians and their staff members. Practices are dealing with decreased revenue due to fewer in-office patient appointments, and hospitals are filled to capacity. In the Medical Economics 2020 Physician Burnout Survey, 65 percent of physicians indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased their feelings of burnout and contributed to a general feeling of helplessness.
Not only are you at a higher risk for COVID-19 infection than the general public, working in a pandemic affects your mental health. Quarantine and isolation often bring on negative side effects, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress (PTS).
Common signs you’re feeling anxious about the COVID-19 outbreak include:
Beyond keeping up with the latest tips and trends for treating COVID-19, it’s essential that you attempt to decrease your stress level and avoid unchecked burnout by following some of these tips:
For Healthcare Leaders/Administrators:
For Physicians:
Physician burnout is – and will continue to be – an issue plaguing the healthcare industry. Looking beyond the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the growing physician shortage will only exacerbate the problem. The latestAssociation of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) study projects a shortage of 139,000 physicians by 2033. The study further projects a shortage of up to 41,900 specialists as the aging baby boomer population relies heavily on specialties.
These jarring stats reflect the status of the healthcare industry prior to the impact the coronavirus has had on physician untimely deaths as well as physician physical and mental health that impacts their ability to practice medicine. The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on physicians and medical staff will take years to evaluate.
While the AAMC study is primarily focused on what the future landscape of physician shortages will look like, Americans are already feeling the shortfall. According to a 2019 AAMC public opinion research study, more than 1 in 3 participants said they had trouble finding a doctor in the past two or three years. Just four years earlier, 1 in 4 participants responded stating they had trouble finding a doctor.
With many factors working against the healthcare industry, it will take a team approach between individual physicians, healthcare organizations and technology solutions to make a notable impact on reducing physician stress and burnout. From identifying the problem to implementing solutions, a balanced ecosystem of all three parties working together will be necessary to advance measurable change.
Learn how Epion Health can partner with you as your all-in-one technology solution to help you and your organization address physician burnout.
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