Doctor burnout is costing the U.S. health care system about $4.6 billion a year, according to a study published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study claims that’s a conservative estimate, based only on physician turnover and reduced work hours. It works out to about $7,600 per employed doctor each year.
"We hope that people will think about these numbers and say: 'If I invested half that amount of money in systems that improve work efficiency, or ways to build better teams to offload some of the workload from the physician, not only is it the right thing to do, but it's also going to improve my quality and safety, and save me some dollars in the end,'" a co-author of the study told NPR.
