Care Team Assistants as a Strategy to Reduce Physicians' Administrative Task Burden

Physicians increasingly perform administrative tasks that can lead to inefficiencies in care and reduced joy in work. Care Team Assistants (CTAs) are nonclinical team members who address inpatient administrative tasks. This report aims to quantify the task load performed by CTAs and measure CTA impact on inpatient experiences of residents and hospitalists as it relates to their administrative burden, job satisfaction, and delivery of care.

To gather observational data on CTA activities, a CTA supervisor shadowed an embedded CTA on 15 shifts on a resident team in real time using a macros-enabled Microsoft Excel time and motion tracker. Assessment surveys through research electronic data capture were distributed to evaluate the impact of CTAs on the provider's experience.

On average, CTAs devoted about 6 hours daily to rounding and care coordination, specifically spending an average of 173 minutes/day with family-centered rounding and an average of 196 minutes/day on care coordination. Survey results highlight that the percentage of respondents spending less than 1 hour on administrative tasks increased from 20% when a CTA is not present to 93% when a CTA is present. A total 99% of respondents reported that CTAs allow them to spend more time caring for patients, and 99% reported overall improved job satisfaction as a result of having a CTA on the care team.

This report highlights that as embedded team members, CTAs have enough elasticity in daily activities to absorb multiple short-term tasks that reduce team task burden, ensuring physicians can practice at the top of their license.