Tag: Mental Health

5 Ways for Physicians to Care for Themselves

Posted on by VettersEnt

While the primary focus of the nurses and physicians in your practice is taking care of the patients that come in for various ailments all year long, the most effective doctors are the ones who also take care of themselves. Many physicians jeopardize their short and long-term health and well-being to meet the demands of the job, which also harms the patients that they aim to treat. How can doctors take better care of themselves?

Why Do Doctors Neglect Their Health?

While the health care industry has come a long way, some doctors still hold onto the idea that paying attention to personal, physical or mental needs is a sign of weakness and that working as hard as possible around the clock is a sign of strength. While working more and sleeping less can work for a small period of time, in the long term it can cause serious health consequences. Why do doctors routinely neglect their health? One recent study attributed it to a variety of things—sleep deprivation, long hours, heavy workloads, disempowerment, bureaucracy, rigid practice culture, the stress of malpractice lawsuits and more.

5 Ways for Physicians to Care for Themselves

  1. Get enough sleep every night. Working without enough sleep is not something to be proud of. Instead, it’s dangerous to your life and the lives of patients underneath your care. The more tired that you are, the more likely you are to make a critical mistake.
  2. Avoid negative coping mechanisms for stress, like overindulging in alcohol or taking drugs. Instead, try to engage in exercise or experiment with meditation to relax after a long day on the clock.
  3. Never be afraid to seek professional help. Physicians are human beings just like anyone else, and there is no shame in asking for help coping with intense stress.
  4. Schedule small breaks throughout the day. Even 2-5 minutes of walking around outside in between appointments can make a big difference in how you feel and how much exercise you’re getting.
  5. Find self-care practices that are sustainable and good for your well-being. A great self-care practice could be anything from swimming in your apartment complex’s pool to volunteering at a local soup kitchen. Anything that fills up your cup instead of taking more out is a good way to care for yourself.

Take Care of Your Physicians with Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

Preventing Physician Fatigue at Your Medical Practice

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As we covered in our last blog, preventing physician fatigue needs to be a major priority for every medical practice. When providers are under constant pressure to perform, not only are they at risk of developing stress-related health issues, but employees and patients can also suffer increased stress and dissatisfaction. Thankfully, there are a number of strategies currently being used by many medical practices to get to work preventing physician fatigue.

How Your Practice Can Work to Prevent Physician Fatigue

  1. Make wellness for your employees a top priority at your medical practice. Remember that physician burnout isn’t just a problem for the doctors experiencing it, but also the patients and employees who may bear the brunt of it.
  2. Create a wellness position at your practice or a collaborative committee. Your wellness chairperson or champion should be someone who can help to survey employees for burnout and troubleshoot initiatives to prevent physician fatigue. These employees can also work to make employees aware of all of the wellness resources available and model positive anti-burnout activities, like leaving the office on time or stopping during lunch for a short meditation session.
  3. Survey your employees on a yearly basis to see what employees are doing to keep themselves in good physical, mental and emotional health. Use the results to identify potential workplace wellness initiatives and get a look at where your medical practice is succeeding and where you could stand to improve.
  4. This might seem obvious, but if you complete a workplace wellness survey, you should also use the results to make positive changes in your workplace. Whether it’s redesigning the way that daily workflow occurs or developing new and better ways for employees to communicate, these changes will show employees that you are listening and that you care about their experience enough to change.
  5. Once you have made some changes, you should repeat the survey to see how things have changed. Are you doing your job when it comes to preventing physician fatigue? Checking back in allows you to also see if there are new areas where you could stand to improve.
  6. Don’t call out employees or embarrass anyone in the office with survey findings. Instead, you should be supportive and continue to emphasize improvement. Just like physician fatigue doesn’t happen overnight, counteracting burnout doesn’t happen in one day either. 

Preventing Physician Fatigue with Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

The Real Cost of Physician Fatigue

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According to a number of recent studies, physician fatigue is no longer a marginal problem, but instead an epidemic sweeping through hospitals and medical practices. Physician burnout has a far-reaching impact on physicians themselves, patients and the finances of every healthcare facility.

Physician Fatigue 101

Physician fatigue is used to refer to doctors experiencing emotional exhaustion, a decreased feeling of success and pride at work, cynicism, exhaustion, depersonalization of patients and a lack of empathy. Burnout can be subtle and affect any healthcare practitioner.

There are four core factors that increase stress levels and the likelihood of physicians specifically experiencing burnout and fatigue.

  1. Time: Doctors are under a great deal of pressure to do a lot of tasks in a short amount of time and document the entire process.
  2. Chaos: Physicians experience disorder on a regular basis, even in organized offices that sometimes lack resources or a streamlined workflow.
  3. Lack of Control: Feeling a persistent lack of control over the tasks performed, work conditions and environment can increase fatigue.
  4. Competing Demands: When doctors are constantly pulled in two different directions, like needing to increase the number of patients but also spend more valuable time with each patient, it can also contribute to burnout.

It has been directly linked to:

  • Physician alcohol and drug abuse
  • Decreased patient satisfaction and care quality
  • Higher malpractice risk
  • Higher turnover
  • Physician suicide

With physician fatigue being a potentially fatal disorder, it’s vital that your practice takes it seriously.

On Patients

Burnout can compromise patient care and patient experience. When anyone experiences high levels of stress for long periods of time, their memory, attention and decision-making will be affected. In a career where skilled, competent and timely decision-making is so important, the consequences of physician fatigue can be deadly for patients.

On Practices

To demonstrate the devastating impact of physician fatigue can be demonstrated in one study by the American Medical Association. This found that in a healthcare system with 500 doctors and the average national rate of burnout (54%), a whopping $12 million a year would need to be spent only to replace the physicians that were lost. That figure does not factor in decreased productivity, financial ramifications of mistakes and more.

Reduce Physician Fatigue with Vetters Enterprises

Let us help you eliminate the chaos in your office and reduce stress levels with our services in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

2018 Trends in Healthcare

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It’s easy to get bogged down in the bustle of managing your practice—attracting new patients, keeping up with the latest in medical research and working hard to keep your current patients healthy. However, it’s essential to remain on top of the latest trends in healthcare and stay ahead of the curve. Here are the 2018 trends in healthcare your practice needs to know about.

Tackling the Opioid Epidemic

The leading cause of death for adults under 50 in the United States is now opioid overdoses. This epidemic is far too large for a single party to solve it, so everyone involved in the healthcare industry including prescribers, payers and the pharmaceutical industry, needs to band together to reverse this alarming trend.

A Focus on the Patient Experience

You’re probably sick of hearing about the importance of improving the patient experience, but this trend in healthcare isn’t going anywhere any time soon. As the healthcare market becomes more crowded and competitive, the efforts to improve the efficiency of the entire healthcare experience will dramatically increase.

Medicare Advantage on the Rise

Experts are projecting that Medicare Advantage will expand to cover a whopping 21 million people over the course of 2018, which is a 5% increase over the previous year. Your practice might see more patients with Medicare Advantage plans as a result.

Don’t Leave Mental Health Behind

As the social stigma around mental healthcare starts to dissipate, more and more patients will start to seek assistance for mental health struggles. Your practice should make a serious effort to understand the link between behavioral and mental health and tailor exams, including physicals, to address more than just the basics of patient health. Questions addressing technology use and the associated anxiety and depression, for example, are good screening tools for addressing the overall health of patients.

Using Wearables to Get the Bigger Picture

The wearable devices that many patients use, like Fitbits and other activity trackers, will start to be utilized by healthcare providers. Studies have shown that the most frequent users of wearable devices are less healthy than average and more likely to be hospitalized for health issues. These wearables can provide doctors with important information on patients and give a bigger picture of a patient’s health.

Partner with Vetters Enterprises for Information About the Latest Trends in Healthcare

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

Preventing Physician Burnout in Your Practice

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Physician burnout is a serious problem. A physician lifestyle survey in 2015 found that over 46% of physicians indicated that they were experiencing burnout. This issue does not just have an effect on the doctor experiencing it, but it also affects the quality of care that patients receive and, potentially, the future of the practice entirely.

The Consequences of Physician Burnout

Before we dive into how physician burnout can be prevented, we’re going to discuss why it is such a bad thing. Burnout leads to:

  • Low patient satisfaction rates
  • Poor patient care quality
  • An escalated number of medical error rates
  • High malpractice risk
  • Increased physician and staff turnover rates
  • Potential drug abuse and alcohol addiction

More worryingly, physician burnout can also be fatal. Suicide rates for male and female physicians are higher than the general population average and widely under-reported.

The Three Signs of Physician Burnout

The most commonly accepted standards for burnout were developed in the 1970s, and there are three core symptoms:

  1. Exhaustion: Low physical and emotional energy levels.
  2. Depersonalization: Cynicism, sarcasm and the need to vent about patients and work constantly.
  3. Lack of Efficacy: Doubting the quality and meaning of work.

The 7 Steps to Prevent Burnout in Your Practice

The American Medical Association lays out 7 key steps to stop your nurses and doctors from experiencing burnout.

  1. Use wellness as a quality indicator for your practice to see how your doctors and nurses are doing.
  2. Create a wellness group (if you have a large practice) or select a wellness coordinator (if you have a small practice) who can promote wellness resources available to physicians and model positive behaviors.
  3. Offer every employee an annual wellness survey that is a good indicator of whether or not an individual might be struggling with burnout.
  4. Meet regularly with other leaders in your practice to discuss potential interventions and survey results.
  5. Don’t be afraid to initiate selective interventions to address burnout as you identify parts of your practice that might aggravate it. Communication, workflow and facility improvements could all be completed during this step.
  6. After your interventions have been in place for some time, offer your survey again to see if stress and burnout levels have decreased.
  7. Using your data, continue to refine interventions and improve your practice.

Partner with Vetters Enterprises for Help Taking Your Practice to the Next Level

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

How Can Volunteering Help Your Physicians Recharge?

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Experts have known for a long time that volunteering is a good thing. After all, what could be bad about giving back to the communities around us? However, new research is suggesting that volunteering is also good for your body and mind. Physicians who are looking to recharge and reignite their passion for helping others can benefit from taking time to volunteer.

The Mental Health Benefits

Volunteering has a wonderful effect on mental health. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, much of that stems from social integration theory. Social integration theory is the idea that the social connections between individuals provide meaning and purpose and satisfaction. Individuals who volunteer feel accomplishment from giving back and also gain fulfillment from being in a helpful role. Another study of older adults found that volunteering can buffer the sense of loss that they felt as they lost other identities, like being a wage-earner or parent.

The Physical Health Benefits

One study from Carnegie Mellon University found that adults over the age of 50 who regularly volunteered had a lower likelihood of developing high blood pressure. As most physicians know, high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke and premature death. While the link between physical health and volunteering might be incidental, it goes to show that doing good can also do your body a whole lot of good.

Why Volunteering for Physicians?

Long days and nights at a medical practice can make it easy to forget why doctors went into medicine in the first place—to help others. If doctors and nurses in your practice need to recharge, volunteering is the perfect way to do so. What are some of the other benefits of volunteering?

  • Increase social interactions with people other than patients and co-workers during the week.
  • Provide a sense of satisfaction and increase self-esteem.
  • Add career experience in other fields to your resume, like public speaking, writing or business development.
  • Stay mentally and physically active outside of work.
  • Enjoy the rush of endorphins and happy feelings associated with volunteering (similar to how you feel after a great workout).

Partner with Vetters Enterprises for Help Taking Your Practice to the Next Level

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

Provide Quality Care through Tele-mental Health Consultations

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The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that anxiety, depression, substance abuse and other psychological ailments affect nearly one in five Americans, or 43.8 million people. However, it can be difficult for people with behavioral problems to seek help from a mental health professional and receive an accurate diagnosis. Mental health services are often offered in abundance in urban and suburban areas, making it difficult for people in rural areas to conveniently access the help that they need. That’s where tele-mental health comes in.

 

What is Tele-mental Health?

The Tele-mental Health Guide defines tele-mental health as “the provision of mental health services using live, interactive videoconferencing.” It makes sense, doesn’t it? In an instant we can use videoconferencing to virtually connect face-to-face with our friends, out-of-state relatives and business associates – so why not use this technology to serve mental health patients from afar? Tele-mental health consultations are an increasingly popular way to provide quality mental health services to those living in underserved communities with limited clinicians.

What are the Benefits of Tele-mental Health Services?

Without convenient access to mental health services, those suffering tend to neglect seeking proper treatment. Who wants to drive 200 miles out of town to the closest specialist for continuous care? In the past, patients were forced to make that kind of time and shell out for gas, potential childcare and missed work days if they wanted to be seen. Tele-mental health consultations provide mental health access like never before for both doctors and patients. Some of the benefits associated with tele-mental health services include:

  • Access to patients worldwide, resulting in an increased patient pool for practitioners
  • Ability to facilitate an immediate 3-way consultative session with a specialist through video conferencing, allowing for more comprehensive care on the same visit
  • Higher consumer and practitioner satisfaction
  • Increased convenience and efficiency
  • Minimized/eliminated travel costs for patients
  • Increased comfortability for those who find it difficult to open up to specialists in person
  • Same day psychological test results
  • Reduced emergency care costs (by diagnosing and treating illnesses earlier on).

What is the Goal of Tele-mental Health Services Moving Forward?

The primary goal of tele-mental health services is to provide patients with the highest quality comprehensive care. Many clinical groups and medical professionals that have employed tele-mental health capabilities have reported that the efficiency of remote care is on par with in-person care.

Want more useful information? Visit our blog again! Vetters Enterprises is a full service practice management company specializing in practice management, revenue cycle optimization and private practice support. Contact us today if you’d like to see how we can help you improve your cash flow.