The Growing Stress in Healthcare – Prior Authorizations

April is Stress Awareness Month, a critical time to shed light on the mounting pressures facing healthcare professionals—particularly nurses, providers, and clinical support staff. While healthcare workers are hailed as heroes, their everyday reality often includes long hours, emotional intensity, and administrative overload.

One of the most draining and preventable contributors to burnout?
Non-clinical workflows like prior authorizations, clinical documentation improvement (CDI), billing, and DRG review.

These necessary tasks may be vital to hospital operations and reimbursement, but they’re also quietly draining the energy, focus, and well-being of care teams.

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When Admin Overload Becomes a Health Hazard

Burnout isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a clinical diagnosis, now recognized by the World Health Organization. Characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced professional efficacy, burnout has reached crisis levels in healthcare.

Here’s how common operational processes are intensifying that crisis:

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Prior Authorizations

The American Medical Association (AMA) reports:

• 88% of physicians say prior authorizations lead to delays in care.
• 24% report that prior authorizations have led to a patient’s hospitalization.
• 30% say PAs have caused serious adverse events for patients.
  (Source: AMA Prior Authorization Physician Survey, 2022)

Behind these numbers are care teams spending countless hours on phone calls, faxes, and follow-ups. The burden disproportionately falls on nurses and front-desk staff—often without proper tools or resources.

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Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI)

CDI efforts are essential for compliance and accurate reimbursement, but they can create documentation fatigue. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that physicians spend nearly 2 hours on documentation for every 1 hour of direct patient care.
(Source: Sinsky et al., JAMA Intern Med. 2016)

Ongoing clarifications, audits, and documentation queries can increase anxiety, especially when clinicians feel they’re being pulled into roles better suited for coders or auditors.

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Billing & Coding

Inaccurate or incomplete documentation leads to denied claims—creating more work for clinical staff, revenue cycle teams, and coders. According to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), 69% of medical groups say denials have increased over the past year, putting additional strain on internal teams.
(Source: MGMA Stat, 2023)

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🏥 DRG Reviews

Hospitals rely on accurate MS-DRG assignments to ensure appropriate reimbursement. But frequent retrospective queries for specificity can frustrate providers and disrupt workflows. An AHIMA report notes that lack of physician engagement in CDI programs is a top challenge impacting DRG accuracy.
(Source: AHIMA CDI Practice Brief, 2022)

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Burnout by the Numbers

• 63% of physicians report at least one symptom of burnout
  (Medscape Physician Burnout & Depression Report, 2023)
  Source
• 95% of nurses say burnout is pushing them out of the profession
  (AMN Healthcare Survey, 2023)
  Source
• Clinician burnout costs the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion annually
  (Shanafelt et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 2019)
  Source

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NYX Health: We See the People Behind the Process

At NYX Health, we’re on a mission to reduce friction in healthcare by addressing the root cause of many stressors: administrative burden.

Our tech-enabled services along with our team of expertienced revenue cycle experts help hospitals and health systems offload time-consuming tasks like:

• End-to-end Prior Authorization Management
• Clinical Documentation Support & CDI Guidance
• DRG and Revenue Cycle Optimization

By combining intelligent automation with expert clinical and coding support, we help reduce provider workload, speed up revenue cycles, and most importantly—restore time and energy to your teams.

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Resources for Managing Clinical Burnout

If you’re seeing signs of stress and burnout in your organization, here are a few excellent resources to explore and share with your teams:

• American Nurses Association – Burnout Toolkit
• AMA – Steps Forward Program (Free burnout modules)
• National Academy of Medicine – Clinician Well-being Collaborative
• Mental Health America – Healthcare Worker Resource Hub

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Let’s Take One Less Thing Off Their Plate

Stress Awareness Month reminds us that it’s time to protect the protectors. Whether it’s simplifying prior authorizations, improving documentation workflows, or supporting accurate billing—we’re here to help.

Want to reduce clinical burnout in your organization?
Give your clinical teams the support they deserve by reducing the administrative burden of prior authorizations and other administrative duties.

📅 Book a 15-minute discovery call
📧 Contact our team at [email protected]
🔍 Explore our solutions: https://nyxhealth.com/solutions/