We know that you, as an emergency physician, have an extremely tough job—both mentally and physically. You make numerous life or death decisions in any given clinical shift. It takes a toll. In fact, emergency physicians experience burnout more than three times the rate of the average physician.
ACEP is in Washington DC fighting to reduce burden and stress—to the extent we can. In addition to meeting with and developing and sending formal responses to the federal government, we develop initiatives, tools, and resources for emergency physicians to be healthier, more engaged and resilient. Also, in the spirit of Regs & Eggs, we recently worked with the Joint Commission to clarify that emergency physicians can eat at an ED work station during their shift.
But emergency physicians still seem to be drowning in documentation and reporting. Beyond simply keeping up with all the requirements, you are struggling to even understand the changes coming out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). To combat this, CMS is spearheading the Patients over Paperwork initiative to reduce administrative burden, and just this week, CMS Administrator Seema Verma blogged about it.
As part of this initiative, CMS is also requesting input on additional ideas to further reduce provider burden. Specifically, the agency is seeking comments on how to streamline documentation and reporting requirements and better align them across Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers. CMS also wants to know how to simplify current rules and policies (so that physicians and other stakeholders can actually understand them).
In the past, ACEP provided CMS with some ideas about how to reduce burden for emergency physicians—but we need more! If you have ideas, or just want to discuss how burdensome requirements are impacting your ability to serve your patients, please let us know by emailing me at jdavis@acep.org.
Your experience and opinion matter and will strengthen ACEP’s response to CMS’ request for information.
Until next week, this is Jeffrey saying, enjoy reading regs with your eggs!
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