Running a practice is a monumental and seemingly never-ending journey. It didn’t start at 8 am when you opened your doors. No, this took decades of dedication, early mornings and late nights, passing a litany of exams, finishing graduate school, learning the business, hiring the right individuals, and delivering the best patient care. Let’s examine a dedicated physician’s practice and understand the value of allocating time to the most important duties (patient care) and how it leads to work-life balance.
Dr. Carter, a hard-working family medicine physician, put decades of her life on hold to pursue a career to improve the well-being of her patients. Seeing the impact she made on patients’ lives was the reason for this sacrifice, but the workload of patient care, administrative work, and documentation became overwhelming. After a full day of delivering care to patients, the clinic would close. However, Dr. Carter sometimes spent up to 2 hours in the evening working on:
Due to her never-ending workload and unfinished patient charts, Dr. Carter missed out on important family events like a daughter’s musical recital and couldn’t overcome each day’s mountain of paperwork.
On a typical day, Dr. Carter fell behind her schedule. Each appointment was allocated for 30 minutes, however, Dr. Carter soon realized it was not enough time to listen to a patient, deliver care, and provide thorough documentation for insurance claims. Due to running behind schedule, patients arrive at their scheduled appointment times but are not seen until well after their scheduled appointment times.
Also contributing to the documentation issue was an inbox filled with 10 new patient messages each day. Dr. Carter would come into the office early and begin answering these questions, but would never finish clearing her inbox. Thus, messages were not answered in a timely manner, patients would get frustrated, and some would even leave to find another provider.
Consequently, patients would complain about delayed responses to medical questions, late appointments, and Dr. Carter’s divided attention. When reviewing Dr. Carter’s patient satisfaction surveys, she would receive an average of 7 out of 10.
All of this came to a head when Dr. Carter began getting insurance claims denied and delayed due to a lack of documentation. Frustrated, Dr. Carter was irate because she was willing to work 12+ hour days and sacrifice her family life, in the hope this would pay off in the future. Yet, different insurance companies deemed some of her documentation incomplete and claims ended up being denied. Consequently, the practice’s cash flow began to suffer and it fell behind on various payments. Dr. Carter felt burned out due to countless denied claims, negative patient feedback, and a never-ending stack of paperwork.
There was no doubt that Dr. Carter was a brilliant and hard-working doctor. However, to prevent further burnout, she needed to lighten her workload and prioritize her time. When Cool Blue VA (CBVA) had Dr. Carter list her daily responsibilities we noticed a sizable percentage of her time was spent on documentation and managing patient questions. CBVA shared that its virtual assistants (VA)s are experienced nurses and healthcare providers with clinical experience that could lighten her burden associated with paperwork, and prescription refill requests, and manage her inbox of patient messages.
Dr. Carter brought in a Cool Blue VA Medical Scribe, who was tasked with documenting patient encounters in real-time, which allowed Dr. Carter to listen to her patients and focus on delivering care. Additionally, the CBVA medical scribe was responsible for prescription refill requests and managing Dr. Carter’s patient messages.
After a month, Dr. Carter noticed an instant impact. Her patient appointments flowed smoothly with a scribe and since she did not need to document, appointments only took 20 minutes compared to the 30 minutes she previously took. Patients felt heard and were being seen on time, and during this month, patient satisfaction ratings improved to 9 out of 10. Additionally, with documentation complete, claims were sufficiently filled out and sent promptly, which enabled faster reimbursements and fewer denials.
Paperwork is inevitable and Dr. Carter still charts at home, but now only for 20 minutes, instead of 2 hours. Work-life balance seemed like an unattainable goal, but with the help of a CBVA medical scribe, Dr. Carter is making lasting memories at family functions and outside of her career.
By utilizing a Cool Blue VA Medical Scribe, Dr. Carter regained control of her time, improved patient care, and finally experienced work-life balance.
Is documentation keeping you away from appreciating your job and living a balanced life? Let Cool Blue VA help!
