Hospitals count up cost of reduced resident hours

Facilities have hired new staff or shuffled schedules to make up for time lost to the 80-hour workweek limit.

By Katherine Vogt, AMNews staff. Aug. 11, 2003.

Some hospitals have had to spend millions of dollars to hire additional staff to offset a new standard limiting the number of duty hours that medical residents can work.

Academic medical centers and private hospitals that rely on residents to fill shifts have been trying to dig up extra money to pay for more physicians, nurses and even clerks. Others have been able to get by without a great expenditure by shuffling schedules and reassigning duties, though staffing changes could be necessary later. And although hospital leaders say they are willing to comply with the change -- and many have spent months preparing for it -- some are privately groaning that the mandate is one more drain on an already financially strapped industry.

The new standard took effect July 1 and limits all medical residents and fellows in accredited training programs to roughly an 80-hour workweek, a significant drop for some who were accustomed to working more than 100 hours a week. Kurt Mosley, a vice president for a large physician recruitment firm, estimates the roughly 20% reduction in work hours by the nation's approximately 112,000 medical residents is equivalent to losing the workload of about 22,000 full- time physicians.

Mosley's company, the Texas-based health care staffing and consulting firm The MHA Group, has had many inquiries from hospitals seeking to hire physicians as well as other staff such as nurses and physician assistants for permanent and temporary work to counter the change. He said it is possible that some hospital-based physician groups also will have to do some hiring because of the change.