Primary Care Physician Time Spent in Patient Care: An Observational Study Using Electronic Health Record Logs

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Primary Care Medicine
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Primary care workload has significantly increased in recent decades.
• Accurate understanding of time spent managing patient panels is critical.
• Identifying determinants of this time is essential for healthcare system efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• Estimate annual work effort for primary care physicians (PCPs) managing patient panels.
• Analyze how work effort varies by clinical full-time equivalent (cFTE) status.
• Identify patient panel characteristics associated with differential time expenditure.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional, observational study design.
• Utilized electronic health record and administrative data.
• Data scaled with literature-based estimates for uncaptured activities.

Main Results:

• Median work effort for a full-time PCP was 61.8 hours/week (2844.3 hours/year).
• This equates to a median of 1.7 hours per patient annually.
• Higher patient medical advice request volume, average patient age, medical complexity, and percentage of Medicaid patients correlated with increased PCP time.

Conclusions:

• Primary care physicians spend a substantial median of 62 hours weekly on patient panels.
• Panel characteristics and patient communication volume significantly impact physician time.
• Findings offer insights for optimizing primary care roles and panel size management.