Washington, DC — As we know, physicians are incredibly busy, and a new analysis from Health Affairs has found what one of the key contributing factors of their busyness is: physicians spend on average 15.1 hours per week gathering info that helps insurers keep tabs on quality of care. Additionally, only 27% of those surveyed said that those measures strongly or moderately represent the quality of care they’re actually giving.
In an interview with STAT, the study’s author, Casalino of Cornell, outlined two ways to make the process more efficient:
- Standardize quality measures
- Improve EHRs so that it is easier to enter data and easier to pull it out
Why this matters:
The time spent on this type of reporting has increased for many physicians from previous years, and while it is extremely important work, it’s putting them in an ever-tighter time crunch with less time to spend learning about new treatments. We should always be looking for ways to more efficiently deliver information, encourage active learning, and allow physicians to seamlessly pick up where they left off before they were interrupted by quality of care reporting.
View the full study here: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/3/401.abstract?=right
