I have had the immense honor of working for and then with physicians since I was 15 years old. Looking back over those nearly five decades, I can, without hesitation, say each physician and clinician I have worked with cared deeply for their patients, doing their best to improve the patient’s current state. In my career as a hospital administrator, I was fortunate to work with physician leaders in their efforts to expand access, reach and quality of care to individuals and communities. Their commitment, passion and brilliance to advance clinical care continues to inspire me. If we truly want to ‘honor’the work and dedication of physicians, and all clinicians, we should do so through action. We need to demonstrate that we recognize the unique value of every minute of their available time. As an industry we must purposefully act to remove valueless, administrative burdens draining valuable minutes of physician and clinicians time. We need to step back and question what value does an administrative task being completed by a clinician deliver and to whom that value accrues. For each administrative task we - as an industry- need to be question and evaluate the time/value of that task to patient access and quality outcome. Does the task create value to access, quality, overall outcome? To whom does that identified value accrue? Although, I haven’t done the detailed analytical research and calculations, my nearly 50 years of professional experience and personal relationships with clinicians, leads me to conclude that every minute of administrative activity, void of patient and/or multi-party value patient and or multi- party improvement to care outcome or access improvement, has a compounding negative impact on a physician/clinician’s physical and emotional availability. We are draining a limited resource. As an industry, lets work to reverse and remove the value-drain of administraive requirements we are placing on physician/clinician’s time. This will demand more than automation. We need to question the ROI of the administrative task/process and effort to the value each task/process contributes to improving patient access, care quality and or experience. Thank you, to every physician and care giver who continues to care deeply and battle daily for your patients and communities. I am eternally grateful for all you do. We, at Avaneer Health, are shoulder to shoulder with you. We are redesigning the business of healthcare. Where effort delivers value to all parties creating win-win-win rather one-side value creation with healthcare’s current carrot/stick and regulation/penalty approach.
On National Doctor's Day, and every day, thank you to the physicians who have shown so much caring commitment to your patients and communities. Combining new technologies and research with past experience and knowledge, while also looking each of your patients in the eye and seeing their needs, listening to their concerns, is a lot to manage. That's before all of the administrative details behind the scenes that we can't see from the exam table. Thank you!