Comment by hattmall
3 months ago
What? This doesn't sound right at all. I've worked very closely with Doctors during the implementation of EHR systems and they don't spend nearly that much time on paperwork. They spend a couple minutes charting things for each patient. Then about 30 minutes at the end of the day going over anything that's been flagged by admin. Then about 1-3 hours every two weeks adjusting rejected claims.
There's certainly a lot of paperwork that has to be done, but doctors aren't doing it.
Part of being a good doctor is good bedside manner. They're not going to bitch about it to a stranger, but it's a huge and well known problem that is almost certainly the single biggest cause for doctor burnout (which is extremely widespread). Some random source (though my experience comes from family) :
"What they learned was that during office hours, half the time — a huge chunk — was allocated to desk work, like documentation in the electronic medical record (EMR), reviewing test results, handling medication requests, and filling out forms. What was remarkable was that even during office visits, doctors interacted with their patients for only half of the time; the rest was EMR and paperwork. As a matter of fact, for every hour of face-to-face patient time, another two hours were spent on desk work." [1]
The paper mentions that was the amount of time spent for doctors with "documentation support" (various forms of automation/streamlining) that would generally be absent in something like a primary care physician's office, meaning he'll be spending substantially more time on paperwork. The paper also (at a quick skim) did not mention out-of-office work, where doctors often spend even more time filling out paperwork. And there are also regulations meaning doctors themselves have to be the ones filling out much of this paperwork.
[1] - https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/physicians-paperwork-and...
This tracks. I just read through all the notes in my daughter's medical file for the last few visits and couldn't fathom where the doctor had time for it. It looked to be automatically transcribed.