The Hidden Crisis: Why Automating Healthcare Administration Matters for Patients and Clinicians Alike

Clinicians across the globe spend more time documenting care than delivering it. Evenings and weekends are consumed by "pajama time" completing administrative tasks. But whilst clinician administrative burden is increasingly discussed, we rarely talk about its twin: patient administrative burden.

International research reveals that nearly one quarter of patients report delayed or forgone care due to administrative tasks. This represents a parallel crisis eroding trust and access on both sides of the care relationship.

When Administration Becomes a Barrier to Care

Patient administrative burden takes three forms: learning costs (understanding health benefits), compliance costs (required phone calls, documentation, coordination), and psychological costs. That third category, navigation anxiety, captures the stress people experience navigating increasingly complex healthcare systems.

Patients perform multiple administrative tasks annually, from scheduling appointments to securing authorisations and resolving billing problems. For many, these burdens result in delayed or foregone care. People with disabilities and those managing chronic conditions face the greatest burden, compounding existing health inequities.

Authorisation requirements stand out as particularly burdensome. Research on cancer patients found authorisation delays care whilst patients face progressive disease and rising anxiety. As one patient described it, getting "blindsided by a denial" whilst dealing with life threatening illness compounds both psychological and disease burden.

A 2025 Commonwealth Fund survey of primary care physicians across ten countries found administrative burden consistently cited as a major contributor to clinician burnout. In the UK, a study of 43,000 doctors found those experiencing burnout are twice as likely to make mistakes such as incorrect diagnoses or wrong prescriptions. Among junior doctors, burnout increases the likelihood of lower professional standards by 3.5 times.

The International Scope of Clinician Burnout

Physician burnout is recognised as a global healthcare issue across all disciplines. Research from Germany found a strong correlation between performing "illegitimate tasks" (administrative work that feels pointless or should be done by others) and burnout among general practitioners. Studies across Eastern Europe documented similar patterns, with administrative burdens and systemic inefficiencies driving burnout across healthcare professions.

NHS England's business plan supports development of robotic process automation and other technologies to reduce transactional administrative burden. Yet implementation remains inconsistent, and many clinicians continue spending evenings completing documentation rather than resting or connecting with loved ones.

What Genuine Automation Looks Like

Automation that truly reduces burden targets repeatable, rule based workflows. It pairs technology deployment with workflow redesign rather than layering tools atop broken processes. And crucially, it's supported by adequate training and change management.

Integrated digital platforms that combine documentation, scheduling, and communication show reduced manual data entry and faster turnaround times. Authorisation automation demonstrates particular promise. Emerging systems that follow logic, access multiple data sources, and coordinate across steps are beginning to automate full authorisation processes.

The automation spectrum extends beyond AI scribes to intelligent scheduling, inbox triage that flags vital information, and standardised intake forms that reduce learning costs for patients.

The Human Case for Change

Automation offers the prospect of returning to why most entered healthcare: caring for patients. An intervention providing clerical staff to handle electronic health record tasks for academic internists found that burnout symptoms decreased substantially at four month follow up. The researchers concluded this "allows physicians to spend more time focusing on patient care, resulting in improved patient interactions, increased productivity and improved physician satisfaction."

From Clinician Relief to Patient Relief

Automation of the administrative layer simultaneously serves as a workforce intervention and a patient experience intervention. When forms, pre visit data collection, and coverage verification are automated, both clinicians and patients benefit. Navigation anxiety decreases. Time to care increases.

Research links administrative complexity to navigation anxiety and delayed or forgone care, suggesting that simplification and automation serve as levers for equity and access. When administrative burden disproportionately affects people with disabilities, lower income individuals, and those managing chronic conditions, reducing that burden becomes a health equity imperative.

The Path Forward

Healthcare leaders should start with high friction, high volume workflows: authorisations, prescription management, and routine documentation. Co design solutions with frontline clinicians rather than imposing technology from above. Track success using metrics that matter: reduced after hours work time, lower burnout scores, better patient access, and decreased rates of delayed care.

The solution lies in automation that handles administrative burden and workflow redesign that prioritises people over processes. When we get this right, something remarkable happens. Clinicians can return to why they entered healthcare. Patients can focus on getting well. Healthcare transforms from an administrative maze into what it should always have been: a space for healing, connection, and trust between those who seek care and those who provide it.

The vision shouldn't be a more efficient bureaucracy. It should be more time at the bedside, more eye contact during consultations, more capacity for the human connection that drew most healthcare professionals to their calling in the first place. That vision is worth pursuing, not for cost savings, but for the restoration of care itself.

References

1. Commonwealth Fund. (2025). Causes and Impacts of Burnout Among Primary Care Physicians in 10 Countries.

2. Health Affairs Scholar. (2024). Patient administrative burden: a scoping review.

3. JAMA Internal Medicine. Association Between Physician Burnout and Patient Safety, Professionalism, and Patient Satisfaction.

4. Frontiers in Public Health. (2025). Toward better prevention of physician burnout.

5. NHS England. (2023). NHS Business Plan 2023/24.

6. Health Foundation. Administration costs in the UK compared to EU14 average.

7. MedCity News. (2024). Easing Frontline Pressure: How AI Can Lift the Administrative Burden Off Care Teams.