Tag Archives: burn out

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Covid-19: Good and Bad News

I am writing this on Christmas morning.

The good news is this: National Guard Empties Bedpans and Clips Toenails at Nursing Homes. “In Minnesota, an ambitious initiative is training hundreds of Guard members to become certified nursing assistants and relieve burned-out nursing home workers.” (1) Well, hooray, the National Guard is called out to help, because the nursing homes are out of staff and we aren’t supposed to abuse our elderly. I think this is AMAZING. And the National Guard may learn some things about work and the elderly too. Hoorah and Hooray!

The bad news is a snippet from New York State: Omicron is milder, BUT the exception may be children. (2) Child cases of Covid-19 are going up really fast and hospital admissions of children. ICU work is hard hard hard, but child and infant ICU is even harder. Blessings on the nurses who do this and the physicians too. When I did my pediatrics rotation way back in Richmond, VA, in a tertiary care hospital, I had children who were dying: one with a brain tumor, one with liver cancer, one with Wilm’s disease. Hard work. I chose Family Practice. I have still had pediatric patients die, including an 18 month old where I had taken care of mother through the pregnancy, but not terribly many. Even less in the last ten years since my average patient was about age 70. All of my kids in the last ten years were complicated: one with Down’s, another a leukemia survivor, others. Children can be very medically complicated. I had two adults who had survived infant heart surgery as well. They were set up with UW’s Adults who had Childhood Heart Surgery Clinic, though that is not the correct name. I am pretty happy to have that sort of back up only two hours away. They both had pretty awesome heart murmurs and that midline chest zipper scar. Ouch.

So, why post this on Christmas? If the cases are rising in children, maybe that will inspire some folks to get vaccinated or at least not yell at family who refuse to bring small children to an unvaccinated Christmas gathering. Judging by the posts on the doctor mom facebook group, there is quite a bit of family yelling going on. Stand down, folks, and respect other peoples’ boundaries.

The problem is, if enough children are sick, we run out of beds. And staff. “As of Thursday, there were 1,987 confirmed or suspected pediatric covid-19 patients hospitalized nationally, a 31 percent jump in 10 days, according to a Washington Post analysis.” (3)

Blessings.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/health/covid-national-guard-nursing-homes.html?action=click&campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20211223&instance_id=48593&module=RelatedLinks&nl=coronavirus-briefing&pgtype=Article®i_id=165651500&segment_id=77808&te=1&user_id=c97a1a8547f511fe3bd45b0806ed713c

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/us/covid-cases-children.html

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/24/omicron-children-hospitalizations-us/

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primary care medicine: schedule

I see patients from 8:30 or 8:00 am until 2:00 pm.

We have people say, “You are off after 2:00.”

Well, no. Most days I work for 2-3 hours beyond the patient contact time. Sometimes I come in early and sometimes it is from 2pm to 5pm and sometimes it is the weekend or into the evening.

So what am I doing?

  1. returning phone calls
  2. doing refills. To do a refill I check when the patient was last seen and whether they are due for laboratory.
  3. reading specialist notes and updating medicine lists, diagnoses and contacting patients to get tests or follow up that the specialist has recommended
  4. reviewing lab results and sending a letter or signing to be scanned and to be available at the follow up visit or calling the patient
  5. reading emergency room notes and hospital discharge summaries and setting those patients up for follow up, updating medicine lists and adding to diagnosis lists.
  6. dealing with multiple stupid letters from insurance companies questioning the medication that I have prescribed. Mostly I mail these to patients.
  7. running my small business: long term planning, short term planning, advertising, commercial insurance
  8. 50 hours of continuing medical education yearly
  9.  Updating my medical license, medical specialty board eligibility, business license, CAQH, DEA number, Clia lab waiver, medicare’s shifting rules, medicaid’s shifting rules, tricare’s rules, and 1300 insurance company’s shifting rules and medicine rejections and prior authorizations even for a medicine a person has been on for 20 years.
  10. Worrying about small business costs as reimbursement costs drop: health insurance. Retirement. L&I. Employees. Malpractice insurance, small business insurance, the lease, staff costs.
  11.  Discussing and updating medical supplies and equipment, office supplies and equipment
  12. Updating clinic policies and paperwork per the change in laws. Have you read the Obamacare Law? Over 3000 pages. HIPAA. The DEA. Recommendations from the CDC, federal laws, state laws, internet security, patient financial and social security security.
  13. Trying to track what we collect. That is, say I bill $200.00. Since I accept insurance, the insurer will tell me what is the “allowed” amount per me contracting as a “preferred” provider. The “allowed” amount is really the contracted amount. Then the insurance company either pays it or says that the patient has a deductible. This could be $150 per year or $5000.00 per year. With medicare I then have to bill a secondary if the person has it and then anything left is billed to the patient. Oh, don’t forget copays, if they don’t pay that we have to bill it. So to get paid the complete contracted amount, aka “allowed” we may have to submit bills to two or even three insurances and the patient. We might be done two months after the patient is seen.
  14. Trying to convince recalcitrant computers and printers and equipment that indeed, it doesn’t have a virus, oh, or maybe it does, and fixing them.

My goals are to give excellent care AND to work 40 hours a week. Half of my patients are over 65 and many are complicated, with multiple chronic illnesses.  When I saw patients 4 days a week for 8 hours, with an hour hospital clinic meeting every day, I also spent at least an additional 8 hours and more trying to keep up with most of those things above. The average family practice physician makes more money than I do. But they also report working 60-70 hours a week on average. I do not think this is good for patients or doctors or doctors’ families or their spouses or children. The primary care burn out report rose from 40% to 50% of the doctors surveyed.

We need change, we need it now, and we need to be realistic about how much work is healthy.

When I was still delivering babies, women would ask if I could guarantee doing the delivery. I would explain: “We do call for up to 72 hours. If you go into labor at the end of that, you would rather have a physician who is awake and rested and has good judgement. Besides, I’m a bit grumpy after 72 hours. ” And they agreed that they really don’t want an exhausted burned out physician.

I took the photograph of Mordechai, our skeleton, today. She is genuine plastic. I wish she would do some of the paperwork, but at least she lightens things by making us laugh. She gets various wigs and outfits and sometimes comes out to show a patient a hip joint.

I am NOT attracted to paperwork. I think I am repelled. For the Daily Prompt: magnetic.