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Physician Burnout Falls Harder on Independent Practices
Doctors are spending two hours inputting data on electronic medical records and doing other administrative work for every hour they spend at the patient’s bedside, according to research from the American Medical Association.
The administrative burden — which is heaped onto doctors who already work long hours — is a major contributing factor to physician burnout, which now affects more than half of all doctors in practice in America today.
Stanford University, Harvard Business School, The Mayo Clinic and the American Medical Association are studying the costs associated with physician burnout, including the cost of recruiting and training a new doctor if a physician quits his or her job. Some experts say that, for a hospital or health network, the cost of replacing a physician can reach $1 million.
But in underserved parts of the country, the cost can be far higher. In areas that are not well-served by the managed care system — including urban and rural areas — physician burnout can easily mean that another independent medical practice will be closing its doors. For many patients, this will mean the loss of convenient healthcare access and the end of a…
