According to a recent (biannual 2016) survey of 17,200 physicians, conducted by The Physicians Foundation, a great number of physicians (48%) feel burnt out and would not recommend a career in medicine to their children. Eighty percent said they were overextended and didn’t have time to see additional patients.
The Physicians Group attributes these results to a physician shortage, the “corporatization” of healthcare with mergers and consolidations, MACRA, which will revamp how physicians are paid by Medicare, and the implementation of ICD-10, which raised the number of disease classification codes from 14,000 to 68,000.
The survey also found that physicians spend 21% of their time on non-clinical paperwork and that 71% say that EHRs have had no impact or a negative impact on productivity and patient interaction. Only 6% are very familiar with MACRA and 14% are somewhat familiar, leaving 80% unfamiliar with the program.
However, all is not completely bleak, 71% answered that if they had their career to do over they would choose to be a physician and the best part of their job is interaction with patients.
The Physicians Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that seeks to empower physicians to lead in the delivery of high-quality, cost-efficient healthcare The Physicians Foundation pursues its mission through a variety of activities including grantmaking, research and policy studies.
To see the full survey which also compares results from 2016 with 2012 and 2014 surveys go to http://www.physiciansfoundation.org/uploads/default/Biennial_Physician_Survey_2016.pdf