GIVING INTERNISTS short breaks from patient care to catch up on EHR duties can improve burnout without destroying their productivity.
That was the conclusion of a research letter published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers gave outpatient internists in an academic health system one 20- to 30-minute period of nonpatient time per half day for “asynchronous EHR-based tasks.” Those included messaging, prior authorizations and prescription refills.
Researchers analyzed doctors’ work trends from November 2021 through June 2024 and found that among those in the intervention group, burnout was 81% lower than among controls. The study also found that work-value relative units (RVUs) declined slightly in the intervention network from 48.7 to 45.1 for a 7% loss in productivity.
The research was conducted in an academic practice where physicians were paid based on a fee-for-service model. The authors suggested that different payment models could affect the difference in productivity. They also suggested that future studies could look more closely at metrics of burnout.
Today’s Hospitalist survey data found that 43.5% of hospitalists cited administrative work as the top reason for career dissatisfaction, making it the No. 1 cause. In that same survey, 85.9% of adult hospitalists ranked burnout as “significant.”
Read strategies several hospitalist groups are using to mitigate burnout: Mitigating hospitalist burnout: A look at what works
