Thank your local doctors on National Doctor’s Day

Let doctors know how your pharmacy makes their lives easier

In brief:

• National Doctors’ Day is Monday, March 30, 2020
• Recognize and thank doctors in your community
• Let doctors know all your pharmacy does to make their lives easier

National Doctors’ Day

National Doctors’ Day is held each year on March 30. It is a day to honor the important contributions of physicians who work to keep the people in our communities healthy.

You may ask, since doctors are highly respected and well compensated, do they really need recognition?

Definitely. Everyone needs thanks and recognition, including doctors.

Being a doctor today

Consider this: on average, doctors work 51 hours per week and see 20 patients per day. Almost a quarter of physicians’ time is taken up with nonclinical (and frustrating) paperwork.¹

One study found that if a primary care physician did everything themselves that they were supposed to do for patients — screening, counseling, immunization, drug prescription, routine chronic care, plus treatment of acute conditions — they could reasonably care for a panel of 983 patients.²

However, physicians typically care for 1,800 to 2,000 patients — and some have as many as 2,500 or even 3,000 patients.³

Doctors are expected to learn and use new electronic medical records, to comply with various regulations, and to stay up to date on new drugs and developments.

Is it any wonder that physicians’ stress, burnout and depression have soared?

How you can help

In this challenging environment, the best approach for doctors is “team-based delegation.” With delegation, doctors can shift a great deal of important work to other qualified healthcare professionals — such as pharmacists.

With this in mind, on Doctors’ Day, let the physicians in your community know all of the ways your pharmacy is making their lives easier, and the lives of their staff and patients. For example:

• Med sync streamlines the refill process and minimizes the calls to their office.
• Patient education including CMRs (comprehensive medication reviews), MTM (medication therapy management) and coaching takes the responsibility for education about medications off their plate and puts it on your plate.
• Managing patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease can be time consuming. Offer your pharmacy as a collaborative solution to monitor and coach patients and provide progress reports between office visits.
• Providing immunizations such as flu shots and shingles vaccines is an area where your pharmacy can administer and track, removing this burden from physicians.
• Point-of-care testing for blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and other conditions is something you can do so patients can stay abreast of their situation and take action if needed.

In each of these areas, your pharmacy is helping patients and helping physicians and their staff. You can keep the physician in the loop as necessary and direct patients to see their doctor when required.

Letting doctors know

The services described above, and others that your pharmacy provides, are well known to you but may not be well known by physicians and their staff.

So, this year in advance of and on National Doctors’ Day:

• Send a note to doctors in your community. Express your appreciation for all that they do and let them know how you are helping them and making their lives easier.
• Stop by the offices of several of your leading prescribers, delivering this message in person.
• Work the phones by taking a few minutes to call doctors in your area.
• Post on social media to let your patients and community know that it’s Doctors’ Day
• Write an op-ed in the local paper showing your appreciation and support for physicians.
• Ask questions about who is helping the patient learn skills or achieve clinical goals between office visits when receiving prescriptions.

These personal gestures help build relationships. They reinforce to physicians, their staff and patients that in today’s challenging environment you are a partner dedicated to helping doctors deliver the best possible care to patients in your community.

¹“How Many Patients Can a Primary Care Physician Treat?” David Ollier Weber, American Association for Physician Leadership, February 11, 2019.
²“Estimating a Reasonable Patient Panel Size for Primary Care Physicians with Team-Based Task Delegation,” Justin Altschuler et al., Annals of Family Medicine, September 2012.
³“Estimating a Reasonable Patient Panel Size for Primary Care Physicians with Team-Based Task Delegation,” Justin Altschuler et al., Annals of Family Medicine, September 2012.