by admin | Oct 26, 2021 | Around MDSP
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a near-overnight revolution in many parts of health care, and nowhere was this seen more than in the waiting room. Now that things have changed, what does the future hold? Medical Economics® sat down with David Berg, president and cofounder of Redirect Health, to discuss the revamped waiting room. The following interview has been edited for length and content. Check out the link below to catch the interview.
Written by: Keith Reynolds
Source: https://www.optometrytimes.com/view/the-future-of-physician-waiting-rooms 
by admin | Oct 19, 2021 | Around MDSP
Below is a story about a student struggling to understand her inefficiency between juggling, schooling, work/residency and being a parent. She began asking colleagues how they managed their time and documentation. Every doctor explained that they, too, were chronically behind and spent a few uncompensated hours outside of work each day catching up on notes and responding to patient messages. However, efficiency had nothing to do with meeting the basic demands of clinical care. Instead, our health care system actually depends on doctors’ professionalism and donated time. This trend was noted in a 2016 study published in in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that doctors — ranging in specialty from internal medicine, to cardiology, to orthopedic surgery — spend up to two hours of personal time each night completing tasks integral to patient care.
Click the following link to learn more about her story, the stress heuristic, described by Cal Newport, the “right to disconnect”, and how locums can help to relieve some of this pressure of having to constantly work. 
By: Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2021/10/13/health-care-depends-on-physicians-donating-their-time/
by admin | Oct 15, 2021 | Around MDSP
As the Delta variant continues to spread, it is also prolonging the shortage of workers across the healthcare industry, straining hospital profitability and adding to burnout rates, according to a report from Moody’s Investor Service. In addition, the shortage of hospital workers has hampered recruitment and retention and driven up wages, and that report predicts will continue into next year. Therefore, this will lead to a further decline in profit margins.
“Even after the pandemic, competition for labor is likely to continue as the population ages – a key social risk – and demand for services increases,” the report concluded. “Even if the near-term shortage is contained, rising demand for healthcare as the U.S. population ages will continue to put pressure on the supply of nurses and workers over the longer term.”
To dive deeper into why this matters and what this means, read the full article by clicking the link below.
Written by: Nathan Eddy
Source: https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/staffing-shortages-ramp-recruitment-pressure-hospitals
by admin | Oct 7, 2021 | Around MDSP
Many have noticed the non-existent flu activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, but research suggest that could change soon. Two new studies predict that the flu will come roaring back this fall and winter. They have predicted that there could be 100,000 to 400,000 more flu hospitalizations in the 2021-2022 flu season compared with a typical season. The findings suggested that the 2021-2022 flu season could see a 20% increase in flu cases compared with a typical season. Young children (younger than age two) would be particularly at risk for flu in the 2021-2022 season because they are unlikely to have any previous exposure to the disease, the authors said.
Check out the link below written by Rachael Rettner, to read the full story regarding such findings.
https://www.livescience.com/flu-season-comeback-covid-2021-2022.html 
by admin | Sep 30, 2021 | Around MDSP, Providers
The COVID-19 pandemic’s emotionally pulverizing impact on physicians and the health-professional workforce has exacerbated the mental health and burnout crisis within health care and demands action. In the article below from the American Medical Association (AMA), they express how they support legislation in Congress—S. 4349/H.R. 8094, “The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act”—named after the 49-year-old physician whose tragic death made headlines in an early pandemic hot spot already overwhelmed by COVID-19.”— the act also includes to establish grants for many health professionals/providers.
Clicking on the article below you can learn more about “The Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act” as well as the collection of news articles that detail other steps the AMA is taking to prevent suicide among doctors and the resources that individuals and organizations can use to help save lives.
Written by: Kevin B O’Reilly
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/doctors-hit-hard-covid-19-stress-there-are-tools-help
by admin | Sep 20, 2021 | Around MDSP, Employers, Providers
As we have read in previous blog post, many physicians are dealing with information overload, however technology can help. There is rapid growth and sharing of medical information has the possibility to improve patient care. However, it can also lead to physician burnout. To put into perspective; medical knowledge doubles every 3.5 years and is projected to double in just 73 days in 2021. General practitioners would need to read 20.7 hours per day to keep up with primary care literature. What a doctor learns during the first three years of medical school will amount to only 6% of what is known a decade later. Medical errors occur most often when doctors do not have quick access to evidence-based information.
Therefore, it may appear counterintuitive that greater access to information increases the risk of medical error, but with more than 800,000 medical papers published each year, there is no efficient way for any physician to process that, which means clinicians may not be current with all the latest drug and treatment recommendations. This article explains the relationship between medical error, information overload and physician burnout, first generation software, mobile applications to process data and provide information, diagnosis, calculators, clinical reference tools, landmark research summaries, drug reference and the verdict.
Source: https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/contributed-how-technology-will-combat-medical-error-and-reduce-physician-burnout
Written by: Jay Ripton
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