HJBR Jan/Feb 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE  I  JAN / FEB 2020 53 Stewart T. Gordon, MD, FAAP Chief Medical Officer, Medical Affairs Louisiana Healthcare Connections cal care to a patient, they spend nearly two hours completing electronic documenta- tion and paperwork related to the encoun- ter. The Physician’s Role AnAugust 2011 commentary in the Jour- nal of the American Medical Association by Robert H. Brook, MD, ScD, stated it best: today’s physicians have three choices when it comes to reducing waste: do noth- ing, ration healthcare, or take a leadership role in identifying and eliminating waste. Should a physician choose to stand idly by and allow cost increases to continue, the eventual result will be a crisis that may yield a solution that truly impedes the delivery of care to patients. If healthcare is rationed as a cost saving measure, the result will be the same—patients will have limited access to the care they need. But if physicians adopt a leadership ap- proach to addressing this issue by identi- fying, defining, and eliminating waste, pa- tients will receive the medically necessary care they need, and the cost of that care will decline dramatically. Yet physicians must go beyond defining the appropriateness of care and lend their voices to the advancement of an admin- istratively streamlined healthcare system. This call to action has been a mantra of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and a coalition of 16 other medi- cal organizations, with family physicians across the nation expressing growing con- cern that they are spending more time on administrative tasks than caring for their patients. Working Together The opportunities to reduce waste in healthcare are boundless, and the greatest of these opportunities is the reduced ad- ministrative burden on the modern phy- sician. By being proactive in the delivery of medically appropriate care to patients, and by lending a united voice to the call for streamlined administrative processes that allow more time for those patients, phy- sicians can make a meaningful difference in the nation’s war against waste in health- care. n SOURCES “Understanding Waste in Health Care: Perceptions of Frontline Physicians Regarding Time Use and Appropriateness of Care They and Others Provide.” John P. Caloyeras, PhD, et al. The Permanente Journal. 2018 July 19, 17-26. “Eliminating Waste in U.S Health Care.” Donald M. Berwick, MD, FFP, and Andrew D. Hackbarth, MPhil. Journal of the American Medical Association. April 11, 2012, Vol. 307, No. 14. “The Role of Physicians in Controlling Medical Care Costs and Reducing Waste.” Robert H. Brook, MD, ScD. Journal of the American Medical Association. August 10, 2011, Vol. 306, No. 6. “Allocation of Physician Time in Ambulatory Practice: A Time and Motion Study.” Christine Sinsky, MD, et al. Annals of Internal Medicine. Dec. 6, 2016. “AAFP sustains fight to reduce administrative complexity for family medicine.” American Academy of Family Physicians. www.aafp.org .