Every Minute a Doctor Spends on Paperwork Is a Minute Lost with a Patient

Why Is Administrative Paperwork Reducing Time for Patient Care?

Administrative tasks take time away from patient interaction. According to the American Medical Association’s 2024 Organizational Biopsy data, physicians work an average of 57.8 hours per week but spend only 27.2 hours less than half on direct patient care. The remainder goes to indirect patient care (13 hours) and administrative tasks like prior authorization and insurance forms (7.3 hours).

Manual documentation can lead to:

• Less face-to-face time with patients
• Longer working hours for doctors
• Delayed clinical documentation
• Lower appointment capacity
• Higher administrative costs
• Increased physician workload and burnout

We shouldn’t get rid of health care documentation. We need to think of better ways for health care professionals to easily capture and update pertinent health care document information to reduce repetitive work, e.g. by using AI-enabled documentation and workflow automation systems, to allow for more time be spent on patient care by health care professionals.

The Growing Administrative Burden on Healthcare Professionals

Digital healthcare transformed the nature of administrative tasks for doctors.

Today, doctors have to juggle EHRs, insurance documentation, prior authorizations, clinical messages, compliance with numerous digital systems, and so many more things.

The AMA estimates that, in 2024, increasing time spent on indirect patient care, including order entry, documentation, result interpretation, and referral completion, averaged 13 hours per week.

Also, 7.3 hours per week were spent on prior authorizations and documenting insurance forms.

This creates a difficult cycle:More patients → more documentation → more administrative work → less available clinical time.

Healthcare leaders can no longer solve their staffing issues by simply focusing on hiring additional personnel.

Although administrative hiring will provide some relief, leaders must also try to identify if there are ways to use technology to completely digitize repetitive work.

An innovative solution is to reassess workflows to allow physicians to have greater clinical decision-making time and less input time.

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