Claimocity Case Study
Increased Physician Happiness
Claimocity's internal surveys indicate a significant boost of over 30% in physician happiness and work-life balance, prompting investigation into the deviation from the national average trends.
Key Question
Why are the hospital and inpatient physicians using Claimocity software and/or RCM services reporting 30%+ higher satisfaction and work life balance scores than the national average?
Summary
The 2023 Medscape Report on Physician Happiness shows a remarkable drop in provider satisfaction and work life balance. Yet here at Claimocity, our internal random sample surveys of both practice owners and providers shows a consistent increase in physician satisfaction and work life balance. So we decided to take a closer look and see if we can determine why our metrics are not aligning with the national average.
Conclusion
There are two conclusions that can be drawn from the discrepancy in reported levels of professional happiness and perceived work-life balance.
The first is drawn from a recent array of follow up surveys asking our clients our key question.
We analyzed the free-form text data through a series of filters: natural language processing, topic modeling, text coding, and sentiment analysis.
Analysis
SURVEY ANALYSIS
Here were the top 3 grouped answers gathered from surveyed physicians:
- Perceived greater levels of organization
- Time savings (attributed to multiple sources)
- Higher compensation (attributed to multiple sources)
DATA ANALYSIS
The second answer comes by exploring the performance data of the surveyed physicians:
Averaged changes across the surveyed physicians:
- Revenue per encounter +11%
- Total weekly encounters +9%
- Bottom line revenue +21%
- Billing time -38%
Insights
From this data we can gather two insights with a grain of salt.
Insight One: The increase in average total weekly encounters should correlate negatively to physician satisfaction and work life balance yet seems to have the opposite effect, implying that the levels of increased efficiency was so great that it allowed for greater production in addition to greater satisfaction and life balance.
Insight Two: The data supports the physician responses and that the surveyed physicians are significantly happier and more life balanced than the average physician because they are earning more in a more efficient manner.
Medscape Results
- 9175 doctors surveyed across 29 specialties
- Comparing pre-pandemic happiness to current levels of provider satisfaction
- Happiness/satisfaction at work 48% (dropped 27%)
- Unhappiness with work 36% (rose 22%)
- Work life balance
- 47% of doctors felt burnt out
- 40% have satisfactory work life balance
- 53% want better work life balance even at the expense of income
Claimocity Results
- 514 doctors surveyed across 11 specialties
- Random sample of survey results prior to March 2020 compared to current surveys
- Happiness/satisfaction at work 79%
- Unhappiness with work 10%
- Work life balance results
- 22% of doctors felt burnt out
- 77% have satisfactory work life balance
- *We do not survey for this metric
What Does this Mean?
Physicians who use Claimocity show remarkably higher levels of professional satisfaction and work life balance in spite of the impact that Covid has had on the national averages.
Though the gap is 30%+ in some of these comparisons, is important to note that the Claimocity averages are only 5% higher than the pre-pandemic averages. This means that we were able to keep our physicians and practices growing in the keys ways that impact these results regardless of the external changes happening in the world.
While these results are relatively remarkable, it is important to discuss the notable variables that limit the impact of this comparison.
As a hospital and inpatient company, we are not servicing the traditional office-based practice segment of the population, and our random sample of surveys that met the criteria of having an initial baseline prior to March 1, 2020 covered only a cross sample of 11 specialties instead of 29, a significantly lower amount. Our total numbers of surveyed physicians are also only a little more than 5% of the Medscape totals.
However, for a qualitative comparison the data lines up nicely and the results are remarkable.
And factors that weigh positively are that hospitalists arguably faced greater levels of stress and lower work life balance levels during Covid than physicians in traditional medical offices due to the increased burdens put upon hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Why We Measure These Metrics
Over the last five years, we have completed numerous case studies on improving satisfaction scores across multiple levels including provider, patient, and facility.
One of the reasons we evaluate provider happiness metrics at Claimocity is because these are critical to what we do which is founded in the simple principles of saving doctors time and making them more money.
Higher revenue means more flexibility to work less. Higher time savings means the same. Those are just general rules of thumb however, so we evaluate products, services, new roll outs, new features, and the impact of our solutions over time through the lens of the customers self-surveyed levels of satisfaction and then compare that to the revenue and time data we have on them in the system to see how something is lining up on a tangible and intangible level.
Work life balance means different things to different doctors. Though it differs physician to physician it is a very key metric for our internal deliberations on whether product features are successful. And the key variables that drive higher revenue and lower time expenditures have direct associations with lower levels of burn out, stress, disorganization, and professional dissatisfaction.
Data Collection Process
Our intake team performs initial surveys with a randomly selected cross section of new clients to create a baseline satisfaction level which is then followed up on with quarterly, semi-annual, or annual surveys to measure change.
The physicians answer a standardized 12 questions covering a range of aspects of satisfaction, preferences, and perceived balance. Each question is given a weight which then averages against a total to create two primary scores: general professional satisfaction and self-reported work-life balance.