One of the reasons I like writing this blog is that I get to be really opinionated and rip the sh%t out of those who deserve it. How blunt is that?
Anyway, the AMA decided to offer their thoughts on 5 ways physicians can find relief from an overloaded EHR inbox. Really? Remember, this is the same organization that agreed to every metric that the insurance companies and government wanted so that their CPT codes would be used. And who makes money off those codes? Yeah, the AMA.
The American Medical Association owns the rights to all CPT® (current procedural terminology) codes and is now enforcing the collection of licensing fees for each Rendering Provider who submits Claims utilizing these codes.
Similar to all practice management and EHR companies, we are required to collect licensing fees for CPT® codes annually on behalf of the AMA. Fees should be collected via your primary payment method. For 2023, the fee is $18.50 per provider.
They make about $100 million off it a year.
Okay, let’s get back to the article. Here is my favorite part:
One study shows that patient messages increased by 57% at the onset of the pandemic and have remained at this “new normal” level, Christine Sinsky, MD, vice president of professional satisfaction at the AMA, and her co-authors wrote in the commentary “The Electronic Health Record Inbox: Recommendations for Relief,” published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The shift is an added burden on physicians.
“After two years, we observe that what patients desire and expect is different. Immediate access to one’s physician for non-urgent questions in real time is highly valued and can be valuable; direct access to one’s physician may even be advertised by institutions as a service differentiator in local competitive markets, and yet we have not yet developed the care teams and compensation models designed to deliver care in this way,” the commentary notes.
Can they make that last paragraph more confusing? What they are basically saying is that patients want to email their docs but their doctors can’t handle the load. Here are their five recommendations:
- Measure the volume of inbox messages
- Reduce the volume of inbox messages.
- Strategically delegate remaining messages to a more robust team.
- Provide payment for this growing form of medical care.
- Advance research that quantifies the nonvisit-based work.
Thank you, AMA! Basically, all doctors have to do is decrease their messages with some type of magic spell or fairy dust and then shift their crap onto someone else. It’s that easy.
Do you know what may be easier? How about leaving the system and going into Direct Primary Care? To be upfront, there are still a lot of messages in DPC but you now only have 600 patients versus 2500 and you know all of them. The volume is less and you actually are being paid for this form of medical care as it is part of the patient’s membership. This solves the problem. Dr. Christine Sinsky, who knows nothing of professional satisfaction and has a sordid past, has NEVER mentioned DPC in her whole career. We do not exist to her because the AMA doesn’t exist to us.
End of rant.