Primary Care Physicians Don't Have Time to Provide Recommended Care for Patients

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Primary Care Physicians Don't Have Time to Provide Recommended Care

for Patients with Chronic Diseases

01 Jun 2005 Medical News Today

Current practice guidelines for only ten chronic illnesses require

more time than primary care physicians have available for patient

care overall. Applying guideline recommendations for ten common

chronic diseases to a panel of 2,500 primary care patients,

researchers found that 3.5 hours a day were required to provide care

for these diseases, assuming the conditions were in stable and good

control. When accounting for patients whose illness was poorly

controlled, the time demand for chronic disease care increased to

more than 10 hours per day - exceeding the total amount of physician

time available for patient care by 27 percent.

The authors assert that the time required to fully adhere to current

guidelines is a fundamental obstacle to the delivery of appropriate

and recommended chronic disease care, and they caution guideline

developers to carefully consider the time required to follow

recommendations, noting that while guidelines may be reasonable when

considered one by one, they are impossibly burdensome in the

aggregate.

They suggest that recommendations be written collaboratively to

include diseases that are highly correlated in the same guideline.

They also suggest that group visits and patient education by print,

video and the Internet can complement care by the clinician. Lastly,

they call for a team approach to care wherein physician assistants,

nurse practitioners and health educations assume some of the time-

consuming tasks of patient education and follow-up.

American Academy of Family Physicians

http://www.aafp.org