Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | May 27, 2024 | Worcester Business Journal 9 Get the Care, Clarity, and Confidence Your Business Deserves. FidelityBankOnline.com | 800.581.5363 Get more from your banking relationship with small business solutions from Fidelity Bank. Our BusinessWorx checking accounts help you manage your cash flow, plus you can easily accept electronic payments for your business with our convenient merchant services. Clarity. Confidence. Physician burnout In March 2023, the Massachusetts Medical Society released the results of a survey of medical doctors on how stressors in the industry were impacting their well-being and desire to keep working. Here are the key findings: 55% experienced burnout symptoms. >50% planned to reduce their clinical hours. One in four planned to leave medicine altogether in the next two years. One in three said their work schedules allowed for enough personal and family time. Almost a quarter said gender inequities and racism caused workplace stress. The top five stressors leading to burnout were: • Increased documentation requirements • Lack of support staff for non-medical tasks • Insurance prior authorization requirements • Overreach of non-medical administrators into medical decision-making • Turnover of staff Source: Massachusetts Medical Society vital signs could reduce traffic to brick- and-mortar clinics. It could well play into expanded roles for physician assis- tants and nurse practitioners, another approach that can help in primary care. But those specialties are in short supply. Bay State solution In Boston, state legislators are looking at overhauling the funding of primary care through Senate Bill 750. at plan would double the funding ratio and eliminate co-pays for primary care. e approach caught the attention of Dr. Frederic Baker, a solo practitioner in Holden employed by UMass Memorial Health. As a past president of both the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians and the Worcester District Medical Society, he said both orga- nizations have been actively lobbying on behalf of S.B. 750. e bill calls for increasing state support for primary care from 7.6% of state health- care spending to 12-15% and includes a fundamental shi to a direct, per-patient, monthly payment to providers. e concept could reduce healthcare inequalities. e approach builds on the state's historic leadership role in finding new approaches to healthcare issues, Baker said. And it keeps the state competitive with neighbors Connecticut and Rhode Island, which are hiking their funding commitments to primary care. Most importantly, Baker said, it cuts to the heart of issues fueling a crisis in primary care. He pointed to two telling datapoints: 1. More than twice as many anesthe- siology residencies are available in the state (114) than family practice residen- cies (53). New doctors are steering away from primary care because of disparities in compensation, workload, and burn- out, he said. 2. He's seeing 12-14 patients a day in this practice, about a third of the number he was seeing in the early part of this century. His practice is maxed out, and he can't accept new patients. e culprit, he said, is the complexity of paper- work requirements, from electronic records to insurer demands for prior authori- zations. Baker has been seeing patients in Holden for 30 years. at kind of continuity of care is an advantage clinics and urgent care facilities can't match. He quickly ticks off cases where his history with the patient has led to a diagnosis others might have missed. Still, he knows his solo practice model is the outlier in today's world. While he thinks Senate Bill 750 can help level the playing field for primary care practices, the problems run deeper than compensation. Price of paperwork It takes 2.5 back-office staffers per physician to keep a practice running, he said. It's costly, and finding good talent is difficult. e culprit is paperwork, even if technology has replaced paper and pen with check marks on a tablet. "Reducing the administrative burden is a must," he said. One factor is state and federal regu- latory requirements that micromanage in the name of safety and security. But a growing intrusion is insurers' demands to pre-approve even the most routine testing and prescriptions. Something has to change soon, Baker said. He urges patients to get involved in shaping the solutions by letting legislators know the importance of their relationships with their prima- ry care physicians. Dr. Frederic Baker, solo practitioner W

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