It would take a primary care physician 26.7 hours per day to follow nationally recommended guidelines for preventative, chronic disease, and acute care for an average number of patients, research has shown.
That breaks down to 14.1 hours per day for preventive care, 7.2 hours per day for chronic disease care, 2.2 hours per day for acute care, and 3.2 hours per day for documentation and inbox management.
The research used a simulation study to compute time per patient based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
“There is this sort of disconnect between the care we’ve been trained to give and the constraints of a clinic workday,” said Dr. Justin Porter, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. “We have an ever-increasing set of guidelines, but clinic slots have not increased proportionately.”…