Breaking Burnout: How 30 Minutes Can Save Physicians 3 Hours

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Hey everybody. Hello and welcome back. I’m Erik Sunset, your host of the DocBuddy Journal. As always, before we get into the episode today, we want to be sure you’re subscribed on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify or YouTube or all of the above, so that you can always get the newest episodes of the DocBuddy journal.

If it’s your first time listening, welcome, we’re glad to have you here. If you’re a long time DocBuddy, journal listener, welcome back. I hope everybody out there had a nice Thanksgiving. Uh, we’re recording this one Wednesday, December 3rd, and with Thanksgiving being at the very end of November, uh, as it sometimes is, it’s kind of a jolt to come back from the, the Thanksgiving break and be in December.

Maybe it’s just me, but this year has absolutely flown by. Um, in the run up to Thanksgiving, obviously we were proud to once again support Caska, the Colorado Ambulatory Surgery Center [00:01:00] Association. Shout out to Simon and his team for putting on another great event. It was a privilege to get to speak on the panel hosted by SCA.

Uh, with Jason Richardson, uh, seated next to me on the panel, and then our partners, Advantan and Ashley Hollis also at the table. We thought it was a really great discussion. You know, we’re already looking forward to the next one. Um, and just as a quick, a quick recap out there for, uh, for anybody that wasn’t in attendance at Casca, we talked heavily about the utilization of data and what that means for ASCs.

We’ve heard that old quip so many times. If you’re not measuring it, it’s just something that won’t be able to be improved. So I wanna double down on my, uh, encouragement to ASC leaders, ASC operators to really get your arms around your data. And the best way to do that is just to start running reports and then asking the question, why, why does the [00:02:00] data look like this?

Why, what is driving these, uh, these metrics? And, um, anyway, I don’t wanna get too much back on top of my soapbox. Uh, but then one of the other key points that I think all of the panelists don’t wanna speak for Ashley or for Jason, uh, but I think one of the things we all agreed upon too was that so many surgery centers are doing things, how they’ve always done them.

And you could talk about any manner of process, uh, but that with so much great health, it that’s available to asc, to practices, to hospitals, you name your venue of care. That you may not realize that the status quo for your facility might actually be the old way. And this is a great time of year.

Obviously it’s busy, very busy with folks who have met deductibles. A lot of uh. Elective or somewhat elective procedures, uh, happening this month. Um, and it is a short month, uh, obviously with the, the winter holiday Christmas [00:03:00] break, 22 days from Christmas. I know there’s a few other holidays tucked into this month as well.

Obviously wish you the season’s greetings, um, whenever the season brings you. Uh, but now really is the time to gear yourself up for the best case outcome for you, uh, for 2026 in your healthcare facility. So, uh, let’s get into the meat of today’s episode. Topic one revolves around burnouts and EHRs.

Uh, you know, that’s a topic near and dear to me. Now we’re gonna look at some data from the JAMA Network, JAMA, and of course we’ll have a link to this, uh, fine piece of content in the show notes. Uh, this article was titled, protected Time for Electronic Health Record Work and Physician Productivity. Now I saw this headline and thought protected time.

For EHR work, uh, this is an ongoing non-discreet exercise for physicians and [00:04:00] clinicians and, and all types of practitioners out there. So what could they have possibly looked at here? Uh, but this is novel to me. This was, uh, not something that I’d seen talked about or discussed before. Though I’m sure savvy, uh, physicians and, and savvy facilities and practices are already, um, are already aware of this.

Uh, so here’s a couple excerpts from the article. Reserving daily time for EHR work only slightly decreases physician productivity. Suggesting that alleviating clinician burnout in this fashion may not compromise revenue. And this is from a December 2nd JAMA Network Open study. So longtime listeners of the show and folks in healthcare and folks in health, it know that there are a lot of throat.

A lot of spears thrown at EHRs, some of them, uh, deservedly so others Debatably deserved and others, you know, when CMS asks for data, the software vendors have to be able to capture that data in a [00:05:00] way that CMS would like to have it. Um, but here are the five key takeaways, um, to know from the research led by New Haven, Connecticut based Yale School of Medicine that included 130 internists from a large.

Ambulatory practice in the Western us. Number one. Each physician in the study’s intervention group was given one dedicated appointment slot per day, which is about 20 to 30 minutes for asynchronous tasks such as EHR, work messages and prescription refills. And as a result of this, uh, asynchronous appointment block, not containing any patient care.

After hours and non workday, EHR use dropped by about 53 minutes per physician. So you’re spending 20 to 30 minutes, uh, not interacting with a patient, not providing care, but simply handling your administrative tasks. And that trade of 20 to 30 minutes, uh, [00:06:00] accounted for a 53 minute reduction in after hours and non workday.

EHR use per physician. It’s pretty good. Their productivity measured by RVs that’s relative value units dropped only a small amount from 48.7 down to 45.1 per week. And at first patient messages in the intervention group increased by 3.4, uh, per week before declining post intervention to 0.3, two messages per week.

That’s a little anomalous to me. I’m not sure how you go from, uh, three to a third of a message on average in a week simply by utilizing this, uh, appointment block for asynchronous tasks. But that’s what the study beared out. And then finally, and most compellingly physician burnout was 81% lower after the intervention.

That’s huge. Um, you’re not talking about anything in this study except a workflow change. So sort of a new [00:07:00] mindset, you know, to call back to what we just discussed around the status quo being the old way. Uh, this is a great tip and would be curious to see what this looks like where a provider is out of their EHR because they use DocBuddy, um, and are still dedicating this one appointment slot per day, uh, to handling all of their administrative asynchronous tasks.

Now, I wonder, and this, uh, I’m not sure, was in the study. I wonder if the time of day for this asynchronous task appointment slot, if I wonder if the time of day mattered, if it’s at the end of the day or if it’s in the middle of the day, or if it’s at the beginning of the day. I wonder how those results, uh, would vary.

Um, maybe that’ll be a topic for, um, a deeper dive.

And on the topic of using, uh, DocBuddy as a way to lighten the, uh, physician’s documentation load we’ve seen in traditional appointment days or additional, um, [00:08:00] work days for physicians. Um, this is even beared out by one of our integration partners Paradigm, which at the time was called Allscripts. That simply the use of DocBuddy without changing anything else.

Saved just about three hours of documentation time per day. So we have solutions that span the ASC to the clinic, to on call at the hospital and beyond. Obviously we’re talking about our enterprise solution here, saving, uh, that much time per physician per day. Um, so to fully crystallize that thought, if you were to use this new workflow of taking one less patient visit per day.

20 to 30 minutes of, uh, of time. You’re not treating a patient just for your admin tasks and pairing that with DocBuddy, I wonder what the time savings for after hours and non Workday EHR use would be from there. That’s one of the huge value adds of enterprise for our practice based physicians, um, is that it outright eliminates pajama time, charting weekend [00:09:00] charting.

Um, you’re getting it all done right there before you turn the lights off to go home. Uh, so that would be. Even more interesting, obviously to us, we’ve got an interest in knowing these things, so let’s turn our attention to topic two. Topic two. Being that only 18% of physicians are highly engaged at work in a new study from CHG Healthcare.

So this is kind of heads and tails, what we just talked about, where a new workflow can save you an hour a day without any additional or any different tech or really doing anything differently at all. Um, but this is, uh, still a huge issue, you know, really. Um. Groups that are really pushing the boundaries and scratching one appointment to give providers a chance to catch up on their admin work.

Uh, again, novel to my ear, novel to my eye. Um, but physician burnout still an epidemic across this country. Still driving the early retirement and the leaving [00:10:00] of the profession of medicine for far too many. Physicians when, uh, the people that need care are gonna need more and more and more of it. And obviously, uh, the baby boomer generation is getting to the point where they are gonna need just more and more care.

And when we have less physicians, and a primary care visit can take eight months, nine months, 10 minute, 10 months, uh, to get to, just in terms of wait time. It’s not a good thing that so many physicians are burned out and so few are highly engaged at work. So when you look at some of the stats from CHG, obviously we’ll link this episode in the description as well.

Um, here we go. While 74% are re while 74% report satisfaction in their current role, only 18% of physicians report being highly engaged in their workplace. And while 57% of physicians trust their direct supervisors, only 41% trust executive leadership, and [00:11:00] this is the same thing we’ve been saying, both pre COVID, post COVID, and even during COVID, that one of the key drivers of physician burnout and dissatisfaction with their role.

Is a lack of faith in their executive leadership. So, you know, echoes of that here going down the list, just 40% of physicians in this study believe executive leadership actively solicits physician input site, despite 72% of physicians wanting to provide. We go on Highly engaged physicians are 46% more likely to be satisfied with leadership transparency, and 40% are more likely to feel leadership communicates openly.

Couple more stats here. 90% of highly engaged physicians report that executive leadership actively seeks and incorporates their input. Among less engaged peers, the figure drops. And then finally, 34% site leadership, not listening as a [00:12:00] major challenge, a figure that drops to just 8% among highly engaged physicians.

So of the, of the key drivers of physician burnout, uh, staffing remains at the top of the list in 2025. Next, uh, clunky or outdated or too manual of workflows for charting, and that’s speaking directly to the EHRs in use, but then a lack of faith and a lack of trust and leadership, and then a lack of autonomy in their own role.

Those kind of round out the top five of all the, uh, the drivers that you see listed in these reports and in these surveys of physician burnout. So there’s a couple things you can do. Number one, take a step back is your status quo. The status quo, or is it the old way? Is there a new way? Is there a digital solution?

Is there a transformation that your practice, that your surgery center can take on, uh, to drive physician [00:13:00] engagement in their role? And again, there’s a broader discussion around culture here, these choices and these, um. These taking stock of the situation, they don’t happen in a vacuum because you do need that mindset coming from the top physician leaders to the CEOs of these practices and of these facilities all the way through the, uh, the chain of command.

It really is in a decision that can happen in a vacuum. And, you know, uh, you just gotta hope that you have the, the culture in place to want to evaluate these things, to have the time. To evaluate these, uh, types of issues and to place importance on them. So process optimization is huge. We’re all busy.

Everybody’s busy. Whether you work in a healthcare setting or, or not, uh, but you need to be able to see the forest through the trees.

And then just to add a little bit to that data we ran through from CHG Healthcare, there’s a, um. There’s a really nice quote in here that although dissatisfaction with leadership can be [00:14:00] tough to hear for leadership, it’s also a pain point that is likely within leadership’s ability to improve then more costly and complex factors such as compensation, scheduling, and work-life balance.

When leaders are accessible, visible, and open to physician input, it goes a long way toward building trust and improving morale. So, yeah, would, would wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment there. So just to kind of put a bow on all of our, all of our topics for today, thinking outside the box is the status quo, the old way.

You gotta have leadership and you gotta have a culture where. Listening is not only, uh, allowed but encouraged, that’s key for physician burnout. Um, we’ve harped on that for a couple years now. Um, not seeing any of those markers change, unfortunately, uh, but the recipe is there. It starts with culture from the very top.

Um, and then secondly, this kind of ties back to 0.1, that if you do [00:15:00] recognize that your status quo is the old way, there are so many great solutions out there. None more great than doc buddies entire suite of solutions that address physician workflow and administrative burdens across the entire spectrum of care from the practice to on-call to the surgery center.

Would highly encourage you if you’re not already familiar, to visit DocBuddy.com. Take a look at some of our case studies, take a look at our solution mix. We will have something that will make your life easier, your physician’s lives easier, accelerate your revenue cycle and just eliminate administrative burdens that frankly, healthcare is the only industry that would tolerate them.

So with that hope everybody’s got their December off to a great start. Once again, be sure you’re subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. And until next time, I’m your host, Erik. We’ll talk to you soon.