The hidden administrative burnout crisis facing physician practices

Picture a fully booked health care practice on a Tuesday morning: phones ringing off-the-hook, patients waiting for up to 45 minutes, and staff moving from one urgent administrative task to the next. I have seen this scene in my own surgical practice and across specialties.

This was never the vision. None of us trained for years to spend our workdays buried in prior authorizations, insurance appeals and compliance documentation. Yet for many physicians, administrative work takes away from the patient care that inspired them to enter medicine in the first place.

The data makes the crisis hard to ignore. A 2025 Commonwealth Fund issue brief found that physicians are increasingly overwhelmed by insurance rules, value-based payment requirements and quality reporting mandates. A related Commonwealth Fund survey found that U.S. primary care physicians would need to work an estimated 27 hours per day to complete all recommended care and administrative tasks. That is not a workload; it’s an impossibility.

Admin has become the enemy of a functional practice

After nearly two decades in practice and several years studying staffing across medical groups, I have found that most physicians can identify the problem: administrative tasks are overwhelming the practice resulting in staff burnout and poor patient experiences. The harder step is pausing long enough to diagnose what is driving it and how to change it.

Change isn’t easy. It costs money, disrupts workflows and requires buy-in from staff who are already so stretched, it’s hard to find time to think. But complacency is costly. MGMA’s 2026 Regulatory Burden Report found that 40% of surveyed medical groups had hired multiple full-time administrative staff per physician to manage payer rules, audits, appeals and reporting. That is a structural problem masquerading as a staffing one.

Practical steps that make a real difference

In my experience, administrative distress usually comes down to two issues: hiring and retaining staff, and the overwhelming volume of administrative work.

My practice was growing rapidly between 2016 and 2019, and we needed to hire more staff to support our patients and clinical practice. At the time, we were struggling to find support for our office administrative team. What I needed was to find a faster, more effective way to complete administrative tasks without outgrowing the current real estate where my already-expensive Los Angeles office was located. I’ve had much time to reflect on these experiences, and they’ve challenged me to think differently about how health care teams are structured.

This is what inspired my work to start MEDVA, where we take administrative burdens off practices and enterprise health care systems. It stems from three clear principles I have relied on as both a physician and business owner, and can help health care organizations operate more efficiently while allowing clinicians to focus on patient care.

Rethink your staffing model

Traditional in-office administrative and support staff hiring is expensive, slow and unreliable, with a national turnover average of 20%. Remote or virtual support staff can absorb non-clinical workflow, including scheduling, insurance verification, prior authorization follow-up, patient messaging and EHR documentation. A well-designed virtual staffing model can support in-house teams and reduce overload, and it’s certainly possible to find virtual staff with clinical or medical administrative training.

Streamline communication channels

Much of the friction in practices stems not from a lack of competent people, but from a lack of systems. When communication with vendors, payers and patients runs through scattered calls, voicemails, portal messages and email threads, tasks fall through the cracks. Standardized workflows that determine who owns each message type, how it is logged, and when it escalates can quickly recover time and reduce errors.

Build a stronger partnership with your administrators

Research from the American Academy of Family Physicians has linked physician-administrator relationships built on transparency and trust to better operational outcomes and improved physician well-being. When physicians and administrators share data and solve problems together, practices run more efficiently and staff become more resilient and likely to stay loyal to the job. If that relationship is strained or siloed, administrative burden grows for everyone involved.

The path forward

Administrative burnout is not inevitable. With honest assessment, better aligned staffing models, clearer communication systems and stronger physician-administrator partnerships, practices can reduce friction and give physicians more time to focus on patient care. Ultimately, the goal is to create an environment where office staff feels supported and physicians can focus on care.

About the author

Dr. Steven Kupferman is co-founder and chairman of MEDVA, a virtual health care staffing company supporting medical practices nationwide. He is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and founding physician of the Los Angeles Center for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.