{"id":4488,"date":"2020-09-18T05:13:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T05:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/signdesk.com\/in\/?p=4488"},"modified":"2025-09-17T07:04:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T12:34:49","slug":"how-doctors-can-spend-less-time-on-paperwork-treat-more-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melento.ai\/en-in\/blog\/how-doctors-can-spend-less-time-on-paperwork-treat-more-patients","title":{"rendered":"How Doctors Can Spend Less Time On Paperwork & Treat More Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Day At The Doctor\u2019s\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Nearly all of us have shared the hurried experience of visiting a hospital for a check-up; here\u2019s how it usually goes – You book an appointment, days in advance, and arrive early at the out-patient department, you wait for an absurdly long time and are called into the physician\u2019s office nearly half an hour after your scheduled appointment time, your consultation lasts an entire two minutes, and you\u2019re immediately shuttled off to the in-hospital pharmacy to purchase the prescribed medications.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, you end up spending several hours of your time for a mere minutes-long consultation. This begs the question – What are doctors doing with their time that they can only spend a few minutes on patients?<\/p>\n

Hospital overcrowding is definitely a factor, especially in India, but the problem cuts deeper than this.<\/p>\n

Hospitals And Their Paperwork Problem\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

The healthcare industry<\/a> is (unsurprisingly) heavily regulated. This means that healthcare providers, especially primary care physicians, must to complete massive amounts of documentation per day to comply with hospital regulations.<\/p>\n

How much paperwork, you ask?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to surveys<\/span><\/a><\/strong> conducted by the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2018, <\/span>a third of physicians spend more than 20 hours per week on paperwork and administrative tasks<\/b>, and nearly 70% of physicians spend 10 hours or more per week on these tasks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The effects of all this medical documentation are far-ranging. Reports<\/span><\/a><\/strong> estimate that <\/span>medical paperwork costs nearly $ 812 billion annually<\/b> and accounts for more than a third of the costs of doctor visits.<\/p>\n

Doctors are also burning out at unprecedented rates due to the pressure of completing paperwork on time. According to the Washington Post<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, <\/span>nearly half of all doctors exhibit burn-out symptoms<\/b>, and the number of doctors experiencing these symptoms has jumped by nearly 40% in the last four years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All of these factors – strict compliance requirements, huge amounts of paperwork, and overcrowded hospitals; contribute to the untenable conditions of hospital staff in the present day.<\/p>\n

Clearly, this requires some fixing but first, we\u2019ve got to pinpoint where the problem lies exactly.<\/p>\n

The State Of Medical Document Verification\u00a0Today\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

A doctor treating a patient has to procure, sign, and obtain signatures on several forms and documents, including:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n