When the AMA set out to address physician burnout, several themes emerged. One of those themes? Confusion around interpreting and complying with regulatory requirements.
While regulations are well-intended, confusion often swirls around them. That, in turn, often leads to unnecessary work that places burdens on physicians as health care systems and others require steps that they believe are necessary to meet requirements.
This led the AMA to create its “Debunking Regulatory Myths” series, which aims to provide regulatory clarification to physicians and their care teams. It’s part of the AMA’s practice transformation efforts and provides physicians and their care teams with resources to reduce guesswork and administrative burdens so their focus can be on streamlining clinical workflow processes, improving patient outcomes and increasing physician satisfaction.
During the AMA STEPS Forward®️ podcast episode “Debunking Regulatory Myths,” AMA member Kevin Hopkins, MD, primary care medical director at Cleveland Clinic and senior physician advisor for practice transformation at the AMA, and Lindsey Carlasare, AMA research and policy manager, talked about the series, discussed common regulatory myths and shared tools for eliminating guesswork and other administrative burdens. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Dr. Hopkins told listeners that he always encourages people to ask specifics if they are told a policy or procedure is in place in the clinic because of a government regulation.
“Which agency is this from? What’s the intent of it?” he said. “We oftentimes put handcuffs on ourselves and limit workflows within our organizations with those good intentions. So, asking questions to help us understand why this is a policy or a regulatory requirement can help us better understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.”
Let the AMA do the work
Standards put out by agencies such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are often written in complex legal jargon, so it’s easy to get lost in the interpretation of it, not to mention the average physician doesn’t even have time to read through lengthy regulations, Dr. Hopkins said.
That’s where the AMA can help. Physicians can submit questions or ideas they have about regulatory myths by emailing the research and policy team directly at [email protected].
“We know the best source of information on these is the physicians and the practitioners who actually deal with the issues in practice,” Carlasare said.
An AMA team will do research to determine whether a myth is true and if it is something that can be concisely clarified. If something turns out to not be a myth and really is a regulation that puts unnecessary burden on physicians and their teams, the AMA’s advocacy arm can get involved to push to change the regulation.
“If we can remove some things from our day-to-day task list that may not be required any longer because of updates or changes to regulations then that benefits everybody, including the patient,” Dr. Hopkins said.
Already debunked myths
The debunked myths are presented in straight-forward, simple to understand documents that take three to five minutes to read—something a physician can do in the middle of the day in the moment that something comes to mind.
Visitors to the web page can download the information or share it to social media, a printer or a PDF document. Myths are rechecked annually to make sure that the advice still matches current government regulations.
Among the more than one dozen myths that have already been tackled are:
- Documentation: Are clinical support staff required to log out of the EHR between documentation?
- Online patient reviews: Are physicians prohibited from responding to online patient reviews?
- Billing: Can physicians bill for both preventive and evaluation and management (E/M) services in the same visit?
- Verbal orders: Do regulations prohibit using verbal orders?
- Medical student documentation: Are teaching physicians required to re-document medical student entries in the patient record?
- Pain assessment: Are clinicians required to ask patients about pain during every consultation, regardless of the reason for the visit?
