Tuesday, April 27, 2010

How Many Administrators Does It Take to Run A Hospital?

From KevinMD:
... for every one doctor there are 5 more are employed to do administrative tasks.

And, frankly, it’s ridiculous. As Dr. Cutler says, “There is a lot of money spent doing things that in no other industry do we tolerate.”
If you want to find out how many administrators it takes to run a hospital, ask yourself how many work on the weekend.

That number should be just about right.

-Wes

8 comments:

ShrinkingDoc said...

Use that answer and apply it to our healthcare system--in my opinion that would go a long way toward improving some of the problems with the system and providing the money needed to make care available to more people!

Steve Parker, M.D. said...

Funny punch line, Dr. Wes!

-Steve

Marco said...

Careful when you sling insults in their direction, Wes, as they have bureaucratic immunity!

Marco

geena said...

And yet the hospital seems to run just fine on the weekend.... :) True words!

ray said...

right on mark! This actually spills into all other depts, no social worker or case manager, no ultrasound or Echo tech ( need to pay more)etc.

The Happy Hospitalist said...

Nice. I suspect the same answer could be extrapolated to VA administrators, but every day is an equal opportunity not to work.

IcedLatte said...

Before any hospital administrator can implement any policy, they need to pass a series of Herculean challenges: 1. Use their own practice mgt software to schedule an appointment for a real patient; 2. Crank out a new patient note in the EHR in under five minutes; 3. Find the correct ICD-9 code in said EHR with five clicks or less; 4. Get the lab to run a strep in under 15 minutes; and the biggest challenge of all, 5. Actually lay hands on a sick patient.

Anonymous said...

That also goes for Doctors . Not many of them around on the weekends and just as much gets done. Not near as many useless tests or procedures on the weekends. Maybe we should look at this as a new plan.