A Philadelphia internist conducted a yearlong study using his practice’s electronic health record system to evaluate the average daily workload of a primary care physician (PCP), in what turned into a “rare, quantitative look” into the workings of a PCP’s office, the Washington Post reports.

The results from the study of Dr. Richard Baron—an internist in a five-provider practice in Philadelphia with roughly 8,500 patients—were published in NEJM. Baron found that on an average workday, each PCP in his practice:
 

• Saw 18.1 patients;
   
• Handled 23.7 phone calls;
   
• Answered 16.8 e-mails, mostly dealing with test result interpretations;
   
• Dealt with 19.5 lab reports, 11.1 imaging reports and 13.9 consult reports; and
   
• Issued 12.1 prescription refills, excluding those issued during patient visits.
   

Overall, the practice’s physicians worked roughly 50 to 60 hours per week, Baron found.

Baron said that the results show the need for a new payment method that reimburses PCPs for the actual work they do. According to Baron, who chaired the American Board of Internal Medicine in 2009, the study should signal to policymakers and payers that PCPs are not paid for the work they “actually need to do.” While Baron said reimbursing for each phone call or e-mail a physician handles would be impractical, he suggested that adopting capitation, in which physicians would receive an annual lump sum per patient, would better cover the amount of time PCPs actually spend on patients.