Is that process that adds time and frustration to a physician or staff member’s day really a “regulatory” requirement that must be met, or is it just an organization’s misunderstanding of a regulation that’s creating unnecessary burdens?
A recently released playbook developed from the “AMA Debunking Regulatory Myths” series can help physicians and others in their organizations answer that question.
The AMA STEPS Forward® playbook—“Reducing Regulatory Burden: Avoid Overinterpreting the Rules”—aims to clarify often misunderstood and overinterpreted regulations and offers strategies to reduce administrative burdens that lead to additional work, excessive documentation, an increased cognitive burden and dysfunction within the health care team.
The AMA playbook notes that 78% of obstructive and wasteful rules that patients and staff identified were fully within control of administrators, health care executives and managers to change, according to a 2016 study from the Leadership Alliance.
“Unfortunately, much of the ‘regulatory’ frustration is due to local practice and institutional policies designed to keep clinicians compliant with their organization's interpretation of regulatory requirements. Each organization must understand how unnecessary regulations and over-interpretation of regulations impair efficiency,” the playbook says.
It suggests that care teams or practice leaders who ask why a process must be done in a certain way and are told that “it’s a regulatory requirement” should then follow up and ask: “Please show me that regulation and where it comes from.”
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“When an organization invokes a regulatory compliance obligation, the tendency is to concede and accept that explanation, but asking clarifying questions when there is uncertainty should always be encouraged,” the playbook says, offering more than a dozen follow-up questions physicians and others can ask when they enquire about why something is being done a certain way.
As the leader in physician well-being, the AMA is reducing physician burnout by removing administrative burdens and providing real-world solutions to help doctors rediscover the Joy in Medicine™.
Experts will delve further into reducing regulatory burdens in health care in AMA webinar at noon on Aug. 22. Learn more and register now.
4 strategies to reduce burdens
The “Reducing Regulatory Burden Playbook” outlines four core strategies practices can use when approaching regulatory burdens. Each section contains links to explore more through “AMA Debunking Regulatory Myths” articles, podcasts, toolkits and more.
The four strategies outlined can help practices redesign how they are approaching things, innovate and create more efficient systems.
Stop this: This section helps practice leaders identify opportunities to get rid of unnecessary tasks at the practice or organizational level so that physicians and others can save time. For example, health care organizations can stop unnecessary EHR password revalidation and two-factor authentication for approving or signing orders.
Another myth-buster explains that patient tests ordered by other physicians don’t need to go directly to physician EHR inboxes.
Start that: State and federal policymakers and regulators frequently update laws and regulations. Health care organizations can leverage the changes to improve processes at the practice and organizational level.
For example, physician practices can start writing chronic medications for the maximum allowed length of time to reduce the number of requests coming in for medications. Also, learn how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) doesn’t put limits on verbal orders in the outpatient setting.
Leverage the business case for change: While changes can decrease the amount of unnecessary, burdensome work physicians and their teams do, deimplementing outdated or unnecessary policies and procedures can also save an organization time and money.
For example, saving one hour of physician time a day can lead to a nearly $40,000 savings for a practice or health system per year. The savings are more than $13,000 annually for each hour per day that a support team member isn’t working on an unnecessary task. This online calculator can help you estimate savings from team-based care, while this one can help estimate the organizational cost of physician burnout.
Share and celebrate success stories: Share successes through message boards, intranet stories and staff meeting celebrations. Give credit to individuals who had the idea to implement the change. Discover how Kaiser Permanente of Southern California removed billions of unnecessary clicks from its system.
Earn CME credit; submit a question
Learn more with the “Reducing Regulatory Burden Playbook” and the “AMA Debunking Medical Practice Regulatory Myths Learning Series,” which are available on AMA Ed Hub™. For each topic completed, a physician can receive CME for a maximum of 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
Physicians are encouraged to submit questions or ideas they have about potential regulatory myths. The AMA’s experts will research the matter. If the concern turns out to be a bona fide regulation that unnecessarily burdens physicians and their teams, the AMA’s advocacy arm can get involved to push for regulatory change.
