Primary care physicians often feel frustrated when they have to sacrifice face-to-face patient care time to perform burdensome administrative tasks as part of inefficient workflows. Our patients sense our frustration and experience similar reactions. While there is much in today's health care system that needs reform and is out of our direct control, this is an area physicians can affect. If we analyze our personal workflows, we can create more efficient ones and reclaim some of our time, especially outside the exam room.

This article pairs literature on practice efficiency with practical suggestions based on my experience, beginning as a farmhouse-based solo country doctor followed by decades working in several large institutions as a clinician, physician manager, residency director, and informatics director.

The mindset physicians need to adopt is that wasted time adds up. I call it the “30-second rule” — spending 30 extra seconds per patient leads to 15 extra minutes of work per day (assuming a volume of 30 patients per day). Conversely, spending 30 fewer seconds per patient by adopting more efficient workflows leads to 15 minutes saved per day. Multiply that across all your workflows, and the potential time savings is substantial. It may take six months or a year to get there, but that's insignificant in the context of a decades-long career.