Not Enough Time in a Day for Recommended Primary Care

TUESDAY, Aug. 9, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Primary care providers (PCPs) do not have enough time in a day to provide guideline-recommended primary care for a hypothetical patient panel, according to a study published online July 1 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Justin Porter, M.D., from the University of Chicago, and colleagues quantified the time needed to provide preventive care, chronic disease care, and acute care in 2020 for a nationally representative adult patient panel by a PCP alone and a PCP as part of a team-based care model. Hypothetical panels included 2,500 patients, who were representative of the U.S. adult population.

The researchers found that PCPs were estimated to need 26.7 hours per day, which included 14.1, 7.2, 2.2, and 3.2 hours per day for preventive care, chronic disease care, acute care, and documentation and inbox management, respectively. An estimated 9.3 hours per day was required for PCPs with team-based care, including 2.0, 3.6, 1.1, and 2.6 hours per day for preventive care, chronic disease care, acute care, and documentation and inbox management, respectively.

“There is this sort of disconnect between the care we’ve been trained to give and the constraints of a clinic workday,” Porter said in a statement. “We have an ever-increasing set of guidelines, but clinic slots have not increased proportionately.”

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