Path f/u in private practice- opinion from experienced GI

[Scope guy]

Hi All
I am starting private practice job soon and wanted to know some stuff reg path f/u
1. Do GI people overall follow their own path, including contacting patients by phone and/or letters? If not, who generally helps with path
2. On an average, how much time do GI spend in doing administrative work? In a typical 7 to 4 schedule, 5 days a week, how do people manage to do their administrative paperwork?

Any inputs appreciated

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[IM2GI]

I do all my own path which is common. You took the biopsy/polyp so the result becomes your responsibility. That open access dysphagia you diagnose with eoe? You call, arrange follow up, etc. Hopefully your job has a streamlined/templated process. It takes me about 30 seconds to look at the path on my 5 mm adenoma and send out a 5 year recall letter.

Depends how you define administrative work. In todays EMR world I am always getting sent tasks on patient calls, refills, etc. The best way is to continuously do these things throughout your day between cases/office patients otherwise it will stack up and you will have a load of stuff to do at night/weekends. The nature of our job generates a lot of secondary follow up/work to do.

 

[Gastrapathy]

I call any cancer. Routine stuff is handled with EMR-based emails or letters. It takes me ~20 sec per patient. The main risk of a protocol is misapplying routine surveillance guidelines to a higher risk patient (say someone who had a cancer and now has the 1 year colo with a 3mm adenoma, the surveillance guidelines would say 5-10 years but the post-cancer surveillance guidelines are what need to be followed and say 3 years). Even worse is the large polyp that needs EMR and just gets biopsied and then a letter is generated that says TA, repeat in 10 years, etc. I've seen those mistakes when the physician is not involved in the process.