TUESDAY, Aug. 9, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Primary care providers (PCPs) do not have enough time in the day to provide guideline-recommended primary care to a hypothetical patient panel, according to a study published in line on July 1 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Justin Porter, MD, of 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 panel of adult patients by a PCP alone and a PCP as part of a team – based model of care. Hypothetical panels included 2,500 patients, who were representative of the US 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 management of documentation and inbox, respectively. An estimated 9.3 hours per day were required for PCPs with team care, including 2.0, 3.6, 1.1, and 2.6 hours per day for preventive care, chronic care, acute care and document and mailbox management, respectively.
“There’s this kind of disconnect between the care we’ve been trained to give and the constraints of a clinical workday,” Porter said in a statement. “We have an ever-increasing set of guidelines, but clinic places have not increased commensurately.”
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