Get Tips on How to Reduce, Shed Administrative Burden

Resource Library Offers Tools and Techniques to Help

Sept. 21, 2023, News Staff — As a practicing family physician, time is your most precious commodity. If spending hours clicking boxes in your EHR or on the phone seeking prior authorization for a no-brainer CT scan isn’t how you envisioned your medical career, the AAFP can help.

Prior Authorization Burden

AAFP members consistently characterize prior authorization as among the most demanding administrative burdens they and their staff deal with every day. Moreover, they say, prior authorization requirements are continually increasing, stealing time from patient care and, ultimately, hurting the bottom line.

The library offers techniques to help you successfully navigate those requirements, categorized into three primary areas.

The first of these is to prescribe mindfully. After all, avoiding prior authorizations in the first place, such as by choosing generic medications rather than costlier brand-name drugs when possible, prevents associated downstream burdens.

Delegating prior authorization duties to designated staff and streamlining workflows also can significantly lower burden posed by prior authorizations. For more details about this technique, check out a Family Medicine Practice Hack recorded by one of your FP colleagues.

One particularly innovative — and satisfying — technique is to tackle the problem at its source. Use the appeals process and peer-to-peer communications to push payers for fewer prior authorizations and faster processing. You can get your patients in on the action by encouraging them to direct their frustration about treatment delays at payers, not your practice. Other ways to fight back include acting through your state insurance commissioner, so get creative.

EHR Inbox Burden

Some of the techniques used to address the burdens described above likewise apply to taming your EHR inbox. Delegation, for example, can play a huge role in reducing the number of EHR messages you need to handle yourself. For starters, your IT department may be able to route incoming messages to a designated individual, such as your nurse or MA. You also can collaborate with your staff to identify the most appropriate person or people to review incoming messages and route them appropriately. 

Build on that process by designating staff members to perform certain tasks associated with incoming email, such as filling out disability or physical exam forms. They may not be able to complete the entire document, but they can get the process rolling and save you time.

If you do plan to delegate inbox tasks to staff, it’s important to create protocols for them to follow when needed. By establishing standing orders for handling urgent and emergent messages and medication refills, as well as templates for communicating test results, you can be sure they don’t fall through the cracks. On a related note, setting aside time each day to review inbox items and forward them for staff to act on before they leave can keep you from being stuck with a backlog of messages that easily could have been handled.

Of course, precluding the need for messages to reach your inbox in the first place is guaranteed to winnow down volume. Tactics such as ensuring the patient has enough medication to last until the next appointment and timing when you order labs so you can discuss the results at that visit can help. An AMA toolkit highlighted in the library offers more tips to manage your inbox.

Finally, although the technological options to address EHR inbox burden are limited, two promising technologies stand out: unified communications platforms and AI assistants. The library offers real-world examples.

Coming Soon!

The library is a work in progress, with more administrative simplification resources to be added in the coming weeks. Remedies for burden posed by quality measurement requirements and chart review demands are up next, with payment burden and more also in the pipeline.