This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Time spent on administrative tasks linked with lower career satisfaction

On average, physicians spent about 8.7 hours each week on administrative work, but psychiatrists were shown to spend the highest proportion of their time on nonpatient-related tasks, according to recently published survey data. Additionally, physicians who spent more time on administrative work reported lower career satisfaction.

Researchers designed a mail-based survey of a random sample of 4,720 US physicians working in direct patient care for 20 hours a week or more. The response rate to the questions about time spent in direct patient care, administrative work and overall career satisfaction was 62%.

Excluding patient record keeping, physicians spent 8.7 hours on average, or 16.6% of their week, on administrative work. In comparison, psychiatrists reported spending 20.3% of their time on administrative tasks. Internists followed with 17.3% and pediatricians spent the least amount of time (14.1%) on administrative work.

Physicians in solo practices reported 18.1% of their time spent on administration, and those in practices with more than 100 physicians reported 19.7% of time spent. Physicians in smaller groups reported 16.3% of their time was consumed with administrative tasks.

Those who reported using information technology extensively reported higher amounts of time (17.2%) than those who used paper records only (15.5%). Those using mixed paper and electronic records reported 18% of their time was spent on administration.

Satisfaction was lower among those who reported higher proportions of time spent on administration. Those who reported being very satisfied spent 16.1% of their time on administration, while those who were very dissatisfied spent 20.6% of their time, on average.

Slightly higher satisfaction was shown for psychiatrists in multivariate analysis after adjusting for high administration burden, but not in bivariate analysis.

“Taken as a whole, our analysis and previous studies suggest that US doctors are devoting an increasing share of their work hours to administrative matters,” the researchers wrote. “If doctors’ administrative time is valued at the same rate as their clinical hours, our findings imply that $102 billion was spent on physician administration in 2014.”

Disclosure: The researchers reported no relevant financial disclosures.