Improving Primary Care Delivery
Mark A. Micek, MD, MPH, is a primary care physician and clinical service chief with expertise in health systems research who works to improve the delivery of primary care.
His research focuses on understanding how the electronic health record (EHR) contributes to physician burnout and wellness, how remote scribes impact physician wellness, and how telemedicine has impacted primary care.
Increasing Physician Satisfaction and Reducing Burnout
Improving physicians’ satisfaction with their work—and preventing burnout—results in a more stable physician workforce that can better provide patients with the highest level of continuity and quality of care.
Burnout is more common among physicians who spend more time in the EHR, especially after hours.
Refocusing on Patient Care
Dr. Micek and his team are working to better understand how physicians spend their time in the EHR, how much work occurs during office visits versus asynchronous care (i.e., responding to patient telephone calls and patient portal messages), and how this work has changed over time.
His team also collaborates with clinical and operational leaders at UW Health to find ways to reduce physicians’ EHR time and burnout levels, so they can focus on caring for patients in the best possible way.
Collaborators
- Brian G. Arndt, MD (Department of Family Medicine and Community Health)
- Jeffrey J. Baltus (Department of Family Medicine and Community Health)
- Adam Rule, PhD (The Information School)
Active Projects
- EHR Workload Demand Over Time: What’s Trending in the InBasket
The quantity and quality of physician work has been changing over time, and this change accelerated during the COVID pandemic.
We are looking at EHR data over time to understand the trends of EHR use among primary care physicians, and specifically evaluate the changes in physicians’ InBasket use over time (i.e., telephone calls, patient portal messages, refill requests, results).
The results of this work—and our direct observations of primary care physicians using the EHR—will help identify practices that are conducive to spending less time in the EHR.
- Off the cCock: Validating Measures of After-Hours EHR Work in Primary Care at UW Health
The current ways we measure physicians’ EHR work can sometimes dramatically under-estimate the amount of time physicians spend in the EHR, and particularly after-hours.
We are digging deeper into the data in order to develop better ways to measure physicians’ EHR work, so these measures can more meaningfully guide future policy, practice, and research.
Funding Support
Dr. Micek’s research is funded by the American Medical Association (AMA).
