Best Ways For Healthcare Organizations To Address Physician Burnout

How Automation May Help Reduce Administrative Work For Physicians

Although timesheets may not be the sole cause of physician burnout, administrative tasks (and especially repetitive ones) often do contribute to a work environment that can cause frustration among clinicians.  Paperwork and outdated manual processes are part of the problem that may lead to physician burnout.

This is especially true in today’s healthcare environment, with clinicians often working long hours under difficult conditions, dealing with new variations of infectious diseases constantly, and ever-changing regulations and policy changes to keep track of.

Documentation Frustration

In a survey conducted in 2022 by the Medscape Physician Burnout and Depression Report, 60% of surveyed physicians said that one of the top reasons for burnout was too much bureaucratic and clerical work.  Physicians spend many hours every week doing administrative tasks which takes away time that can be spent with their patients.

The administrative burden is often viewed as a barrier to quality delivery of care and a significant reason that physicians experience burnout.  Documentation, such as submitting and tracking timesheets, can be frustrating for doctors.  It’s not uncommon in today’s healthcare environment to see doctors writing notes in various formats such as paper, email, and text messages (and then having to duplicate some of that information into the patient chart).

In addition to this duplicate documentation, physicians are also dealing with an increase in the number of patient visits which results in more notes to write.

How Technology and Automation Can Help

As healthcare-focused technology continues to improve, software to help automate administrative tasks will facilitate the improvement of the clinician experience, as well as healthcare system success.

For healthcare organizations, there are many reasons to utilize and adopt technology to help address provider burnout.  These include lowering the risk of medical errors, increased revenue due to physicians being able to spend more time with patients (instead of doing administrative tasks), better patient experience, improved patient satisfaction scores, and potential cost savings for the hospital.

Many factors impact physician burnout, however, it is safe to say that better technology makes doctors’ jobs more efficient. User-friendly healthcare time tracking software is one of many things that can help reduce physician burnout by eliminating unnecessary tasks, and giving doctors the tools to more efficiently perform the administrative work they need to do and ultimately help clinicians focus more on what’s important to them — spending more time with and providing better care for their patients. These are just a few of the reasons why physician compensation executives are falling in love with AI-driven physician payment workflows.