Physician Data Analytics and Challenges in 2014 – Part 5: Balancing Your Life
Last month, I commented on physician analytics related to better staff training and impact of the “internet armed” self-diagnosis patient. This month I will discuss how your role as a primary care physician may change and where you can actually use data analytics to get balance back into your life.
Primary Care’s Changing Role
According to leaders in family and internal medicine, the Affordable Care Act will ultimately lead to a more unified, less fragmented healthcare system. Much of this vision is focused on the PCMH model of care (J. Bendix, D.R. Verdon, A. Ritchie, D. Marbury, in Medical Economics, 12/15/13).
The PCMH model performs five key functions related to patient care: 1) offers comprehensive care for prevention, 2) treats the whole person, 3) coordinates care among healthcare systems and specialists, 4) offers greater access to services (i.e. the one-stop shop), and 5) commits to quality care and quality improvement.
The challenge for primary care practices will be in conducting a thorough analysis of its organization, practice patterns, etc. A key approach should be to identify all “value added” and “non-value added” steps in the workflow process and eliminate the non-value added steps. Use of a physician data analytics package within your Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a cornerstone for this change.
Work-Life Balance
According to a survey by Medical Economics, more than 73 percent of physicians work more than 40 hours per week, and about 24 percent work more than 60 hours per week. The onslaught of the many regulatory changes in 2014 is not going to lower the work demands. This will and has already led to the dreaded occupational hazard of “burnout.”
Maintaining a reasonable work-life balance helps safeguard physician wellness which ultimately helps in serving the patients better. The unavoidable fact is that unhappy physicians make for a poorer healthcare system. Fixing the work-life balance will improve healthcare for all patients.
So, what are my options? One of the key steps toward work-life balance is to move toward a PCMH model where EACH person in your practice performs at the highest level allowed by licensure. This can help move many patient care tasks away from the physician and to other staff within the practice. By following this model, a physician can definitely improve work-life balance. The key here is to use data analytics along with your EHR to work “smarter” and not “harder.”
Next month, I would like to provide a short example of how collection of some simple clinical quality measures and putting them into a data analytics system, can be a very powerful approach to better and more efficient patient care, and once again, help to improve work-life balance.
The North Texas Regional Extension Center (NTREC) has grant-subsidized services to help you implement an EHR. For a preview of our services, please click here.
