Healthy Practice
Resources for you and your practice
Patients over paperwork: Tackling administrative burden
Guess what topic consistently tops the list of concerns our members share in recent TAFP member surveys? Hint: AAFP's member surveys are lead by the same thing. That's right, it's administrative burden. In today's ever-changing patient care environment, your clinical time is in direct competition with the myriad boxes that must be checked, messages that must be handled, proper documentation and authorizations that must be completed. No wonder physicians report such high incidence of burnout.
The TAFP Council on Medical Practice is working to identify and curate resources to help you ease this burden and reclaim your time with your patients. The council is also focused on advancing and championing advocacy efforts to fight unnecessary and impractical requirements.
The following compendium of articles and guides have been compiled by the council. If you would like to suggest resources you have found helpful, please email Jonathan Nelson, TAFP Director of Communications.
Administrative simplification resources from AAFP
Find out what your Academy is doing to reduce administrative complexity in the areas of prior authorization, payment, documentation and coding, quality measures, and more.
aafp.org/membership/initiatives/administrative-simplification
Groundbreaking new technologies and strategies can help alleviate stressors related to your inbox and help you focus on what matters most.
In these free on-demand activities, family physicians discuss innovations they’ve deployed to address administrative burden.
Solutions to Administrative Burden: Inbox
In addition to our advocacy efforts to reduce administrative tasks that steal clinical time and exacerbate burnout, your Academy offers practical ideas for cutting down your documentation burden, streamlining your prior authorization processes, and dealing with your EHR inbox.
aafp.org/family-physician/practice-and-career/administrative-simplification
"AAFP has launched a series of innovation labs to identify and demonstrate innovations essential to optimizing the family medicine experience." That's the first line of this report that details the successes recorded in the Academy's partnership with Suki, an AI assistant used for visit note completion.
Articles from Family Practice Management
AAFP’s magazine Family Practice Management is loaded with helpful articles to assist you in running your practice smoothly. Here is a set of articles focused on reducing administrative burden.
- A guide to relieving administrative burden: Essential innovations for documentation burden
- Using a nurse triage model to address patient messages
- Clinical workflow efficiencies to alleviate physician burnout and reduce work after clinic
Reducing physician burden starts with four key changes. - A team-based approach to electronic in-basket optimization
Shifting from an individual physician in-basket to a team-based in-basket pool can reduce physician clerical work and restore joy in practice. - 10 ways to reduce your administrative and documentation burden
- Seven habits for reducing work after clinic
Imagine shutting your office door at the end of the day and not having any work that you need to take home. These shifts in practice can help you reclaim your time.
Other administrative simplification resources
American Medical Association
EHR inbox management – Tame your EHR inbox
American College of Physicians
Reducing administrative burdens