Physicians' lack of time, particularly from administrative burdens from medical records, are harming their ability to provide patient care.
Jeff Clode, MD, an internal medicine specialist in Spokane, Wash., joined Becker's to discuss physicians' biggest obstacles to patient care.
Editor's note: This piece was edited lightly for clarity and length.
Dr. Jeff Clode: Time, or lack of it, is the biggest enemy to providing excellent patient care. This comes from the pressure to produce, either from a healthcare system or admittedly self-imposed, and needs to be solvent and profitable in a private practice. Second, the pressure to produce, either from a healthcare system or admittedly self-imposed, needs to be solvent and profitable in a private practice. Third, the ungodly amount of time sucked up by doing an adequate job on the EMR. Only a Luddite would deny the value of computerized medical records when properly done. However, no one has cracked that nut yet. So either a provider slows to a crawl to do the EMR well, or they speed along and contribute to the bloated, confusing, jumbled, often nonsensical pile of "information" contained therein.
Additionally, bureaucratic demands from payers, [pharmacy benefit managers], etc. — totally understandable in our profit-driven, fee-for-service, capitalistic healthcare system, but the result is a horrible time sink because the process is so inefficient, cumbersome, and, dare I say, designed to be confrontational. There is also a lack of support staff to adequately deal with the listed obstacles, especially acute issues in the less profitable parts of medicine like primary care.
For independent small practices, the lack of support staff is even more profound. How can the small practice have access to the necessary skill sets to keep a small organization going? They need [human resources], billing and regulatory expertise to deal with payers and regulatory bodies, computer skills, etc. I honestly can't imagine trying to start a private practice unless I were in a very lucrative speciality like dermatology or plastic surgery.