From a new way hospitals and health systems are utilizing ASCs to growing burnout from physicians, here are five trends in the physician workforce that ASC leaders need to keep tabs on:
ASC’s emerging role in recruiting surgeons and physicians
- Hospital and health systems are increasingly using ASCs to attract and retain surgeons, especially those in high demand specialties.
- More than 90% of hospital and health system leaders view having an ASC as important for surgeon recruitment, according to Avanza’s Intelligence Hospital Leadership ASC Survey.
- About two-thirds of hospitals and health systems are investing in ASCs to improve physician relationships.
‘Quiet quitting’ from physicians
- Over three-quarters of physicians feel that health systems are not doing enough to address “quiet quitting,” according to a survey of 600 physicians from Sermo, a healthcare provider engagement platform.
- Physicians are adjusting their work behaviors, including minimizing documentation, reducing patient-facing hours, turning down leadership roles and skipping professional development opportunities.
Staff turnover driven by burnout
- Staff retention and turnover is undermining ASC’s financial performance, according to Benjamin Stein, MD, president and CEO of Capital Orthopaedic Surgery Center in Germantown, Md.
- High turnover leads to facilities and systems having to rely on costly staffing agencies and decreased efficiency from unfamiliar and new staff members.
Physicians having to frequently work with understaffed teams
- Close to 50% of physicians work with an incompletely staffed team at least 25% of the time, according to a May 14 report published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
- Physicians who have to work with incomplete teams often have a higher rate of burnout compared to physicians who have fully staffed teams.
The ongoing anesthesia shortage
- If the anesthesia workforce shortage goes unaddressed, it could lead to delays in surgeries, decreased efficiency when those surgeries are performed and increased risk for patients, according to Mark Zapp, MD, an anesthesiologist at Fleming Island (Fla.) Surgery Center.
- According to Erin Pukenas, MD, vice chair and associate professor of the department of anesthesiology at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, N.J., the current situation is not just a staffing problem, it is also potentially an access to care and quality of care issue.
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