Dive Brief:
- A new study appearing in Health Affairs concludes that primary care docs waste an average of 30 minutes a day, and nurses 60 minutes per physician per day, on prescription renewal tasks that could be changes to take much less time.
- Eliminating these inefficiencies to improve patient flow could help relieve the physician shortage expected to occur in coming years.
- If the inefficiencies were eliminated, the 30 minutes of wasted time per day could translate into 30-40 million more primary care visits available each year, researchers concluded.
Dive Insight:
Eliminating inefficiencies that bog down physicians in petty tasks not only saves time better used elsewhere, it also lowers doctor frustration with their jobs. Reducing physician frustration with tasks like these and thereby cutting down on burnout is a laudable goal which practices should embrace. It doesn't hurt any that such measures are also likely to save practices money. All told, it seems that the Health Affairs authors are onto something importany.