Health Policy Topic: Putting Patients First and Preventing Errors by Limiting Administrative Tasks for Providers in the Healthcare Setting
Mozie M Fleurimon
Florida Atlantic University
April 10, 2022
HSA 6152
Health Policy Topic: Putting Patients First and Preventing Errors by Limiting Administrative Tasks for Providers in the Healthcare Setting

1. Introduction

1. What are administrative tasks?

1. In health care, to describe administrative tasks (also recognized as burdens) is challenging as the tasks themselves (Davenport & Kalakota, 2019).
2. In some cases, burdensome administrative tasks might be different from one payer to another and appear a month without any warning, then come back altered or changed the following and often is caused by not utilizing documentation within the medical records.
3. These tasks are just as complex, if not more difficult, than figuring out how to minimize or eliminate the adverse effects of these tasks on physicians, patients, and the healthcare system.

1. Problem statement- Patients, physicians, and the health care setting are being burdened by an ever-increasing number of administrative tasks, raising costs for everyone involved. Additionally, administrative burdens take time and attention away from more clinically significant activities, such as providing direct patient care and improving quality, resulting in a delay or failure to provide timely and appropriate care or treatment for patients. Administrative tasks also prevent physicians from entering or staying in primary care and may cause them to decline participation in specific insurance plans due to the excessive requirements. Physicians’ stress and burnout have been linked to an increase in the number of tasks required to perform.

1. Contention with administrative tasks

1. Measurement of Patients Experience and Developing Consumer Expectations.

1. Physicians and healthcare personnel spend about 4 to 6 hours weekly on administrative tasks, primarily related to BIR activity, with an estimate as high as 7.8 hours (Maris et al., 2020).
2. For each full-time physician, practices spend an estimated $68 000 to $85 000 annually on administrative tasks that some experts approximate to be 15 percent to 14 percent of total practice income (Maris et al., 2020).

1. Measurement and Reporting Impact

1. One can reasonably believe that the burdens of quality measurement and reporting have increased due to the rise in value-based payment approaches in health care.
2. The variation in quality reporting programs adds to the administrative burden for hospitals.

1. EHER or Health IT Impact

1. The impacts of EHRs and developing purposes and clinical documentation drivers in EHRs have resulted in this negative outcome.
2. One of the drivers is the ease at which past entries might be moved forward, making it hard for physicians to get the most valuable and actionable data.

1. Impact on Physician Satisfaction

1. Burnout is more common among healthcare professionals than other workers, and it is on the rise due to administrative tasks.
2. Workflow, emphasis on quality in an organization, work control, trust, cohesiveness, and values alignment between physicians and the leaders have all been linked to burnout in the medical community (Lopriore et al., 2017).

2. Policy Analysis

1. Option:

1. External stakeholders who build-up or apply administrative tasks with time, quality of care, and monetary impact should provide these statements for public assessment and comment.

1. The activity must take place for current and any new administrative tasks.
2. It is important to challenge, amend, or eliminate tasks that negatively impact patient care, pointlessly question physicians and other clinician decisions, or increase expenses.

1. All healthcare system stakeholders have to regularly review, revise, align, and streamline any administrative task that cannot be eradicated from the healthcare setting.
2. Individuals must collaborate with stakeholders, including health care providers, patients, professional societies, and electronic health record dealers, to develop performance actions that reduce pointless clinician burdens while maximizing patient-centeredness and integrating the measurement (Karia, Hughes & Carr, 2019).
3. Stakeholders must review and reflect on streamlining or reducing duplicative administrative requirements as the U.S. health care system shifts toward value.
4. Patients and their families deserve to know how administrative tasks affect the quality, time, and cost of our healthcare system, physicians, and other healthcare providers, the experience of patients, and the outcomes for patients (Yang & Nambudiri, 2021).
5. Research should be conducted on the most effective methods for reducing administrative burdens on physicians and other clinicians.

1. The distribution of these best practices should involve every key stakeholder, counting oversight bodies, clinicians, payers, vendors, and others.

3. Conclusion

1. An administrative task can be analyzed using the ACP’s source, intent, effect, and solution framework. With this framework, clinicians and their employees can better understand the administrative tasks they may face. As a result of this framework, policy recommendations for stakeholders outside of the physician practice and provider setting will be able to assess all administrative requirements, regulations, or programs to find out whether they must be challenged, modified, or eliminated.
2. The steps that various key stakeholders might and must take to align and restructure administrative tasks that stay in position are also outlined in these recommendations. As health care shifts from one founded on volume to one based on the value of services offered, these guidelines become even more critical.
3. Meaningful collaboration is needed to ensure that information technology is utilized as creatively as possible to make more efficient processes while also reducing the overall burden on providers. There is some consistency, but more research is required in that region concerning best practices to lessen the burdens of these responsibilities.
4. Best practices need to be disseminated extensively once they have been defined. Physicians and their patients suffer when burdened with excessive administrative tasks. Stakeholders can attend to the administrative burden that keeps physicians from putting the patients first.

References
Davenport, T., & Kalakota, R. (2019). The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare.Future healthcare journal,6(2), 94. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6616181/
Karia, C. T., Hughes, A., & Carr, S. (2019). Uses of quick response codes in healthcare education: a scoping review.BMC Medical Education,19(1), 1-14. https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-019-1876-4
Lopriore, S., LeCouteur, A., Ekberg, S., & Ekberg, K. (2017). Delivering healthcare at a distance: Exploring the organisation of calls to a health helpline.International Journal of Medical Informatics,104, 45-55. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386505617301077
Maris, A., Van Gaalen, H., Moeke, D., & Ravesteijn, P. (2020). The impact of laws and regulations on the administrative burdens within healthcare. In16th European Conference on Management Leadership and Governance(pp. 26-27). https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=c4MIEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA149&dq=Administrative+Tasks+in+healthcare&ots=btoVYt548L&sig=opQ2Fo5odqUmuVLu482rc3qsuIw
Yang, K., & Nambudiri, V. E. (2021). Anticipating Ambulatory Automation: Potential Applications of Administrative and Clinical Automation in Outpatient Healthcare Delivery.Applied Clinical Informatics,12(05), 1157-1160. https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/s-0041-1740259