Practice Management Alert

Question: Our physicians and nonphysician practitioners (NPPs) are great clinicians and truly care about their patients. However, I’ve noticed that they seem more and more burned out. Even when they manage to take some time off, beyond their usual weekends, they don’t seem recharged and ready to be back at work. I worry about them as people! Is there anything I can do to help them feel like they can disconnect from work when they’re out of the office and actually recharge?

Pennsylvania Subscriber

Answer: As technology has made communication more accessible, less expensive, and instantaneous, people across industries (and even within their social groups) have found it increasingly difficult to disconnect in any meaningful way. People feel like they must be reachable and responsive at all times, even when on vacation, via audio or audio/visual calls, messaging, and email.

Plus, in this situation in particular, providers often feel overwhelmed by all the paperwork involved in clinical work and need to make time to manage those aspects of clinical care without cutting down on their availability to see patients. They’re thinking about work and often needing to complete work even after hours, which can also bleed into intended downtime.

While this is cultural conditioning that probably cannot be fixed over the course of a few days of paid time off (PTO) or via a simple change in your human resources (HR) handbook, you can make small changes in your practice’s work culture to encourage more disconnect when clinicians aren’t at work.

For example, you can establish protocols for designating communications that are truly urgent from information that needs to be attended to, but not between courses during a holiday dinner.

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Designate a specific word for email subject lines when you really need the clinician to acknowledge or respond to communication immediately, and let them know they can wait on emails without that keyword.
• Use the “schedule send” function available in many email programs so you can write emails on your own time but not inundate your staff.
• Commit to building sufficient time into your providers’ schedules for email, patient portal communications, etc., so they feel like they can perform their clinical-adjacent work while at work — and have the mental space to really unplug while they’re away.

Rachel Dorrell, MA, MS, CPC-A, CPPM, Production Editor, AAPC