Nearly $1 billion in annual excess healthcare spending is due to turnover of primary care physicians, a new study has found.
The study was led by the American Medical Association (AMA) and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. It relied on Medicare patient data, estimates for non-Medicare patients and the AMA Physician Masterfile, a data set of all U.S. physicians. The study also relied on a survey conducted mid-October 2017 to mid-March 2018 on physicians’ intent to leave practice due to burnout.
The analysis found $979 million in excess health spending annually comes from primary care physician turnover, with more than a quarter, $260 million, attributable to burnout.
“Turnover of primary care physicians is costly to public and private payers, yet there is an opportunity to decrease unnecessary health care expenditures by reducing burnout-related turnover,” Christine Sinsky, M.D., the study’s lead author and AMA vice president of professional satisfaction, said in a press release. “Physician burnout is preventable and payers, health care organizations, and others have a vested interest in making meaningful changes to reduce physician burnout.”
Physician turnover has risen exponentially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among primary care physicians but also among others from front-line clinical support staff to data engineers.
AMA called for health systems to redouble focus on physician well-being—which is essential to achieving national health goals—and suggested providers leverage some of AMA’s tools aimed at reducing the work burden of physicians such as EHRSeeWhatWeMean.org, institutional assessments of organizational burnout or AMA STEPS Forward, a toolkit for managing stress.