Thirteen hours a week, and most of it never reaches the doctor
The AMA's 2025 prior authorization survey puts the burden at 13 hours of physician and staff time every week. The interesting part is the word 'staff' — because that work is done at the front desk, not in the exam room.
The American Medical Association surveys 1,000 practising physicians about prior authorization every year. The 2025 results are worth reading in full, but one number does most of the work.
Prior authorization consumes an average of 13 hours of physician and staff time per week. Physicians complete around 40 prior authorizations a week. Two in five practices now employ someone whose job is only prior authorization.
The word doing the heavy lifting is "staff"
Read that figure quickly and it sounds like a physician problem. It is a physician problem — 94% of respondents said prior authorization contributes to burnout. But the hours themselves are not mostly spent by the physician.
The physician makes the clinical decision. Somebody else then finds the payer's form, looks up whether this drug needs authorization under this plan this year, submits it, waits, checks the portal, phones when the portal says nothing, re-submits when the payer asks for a chart note, and tells the patient why their medication has not arrived.
In a practice of three physicians that is not a task. It is somebody's afternoon, every afternoon.
Why it is invisible in the accounts
Prior authorization has no line in a practice's P&L. It shows up as part of a salary that is filed under "front desk", alongside answering the phone and checking people in. Nobody budgeted for it, so nobody sees it grow — and it has grown: the AMA's own tracking shows the volume rising year on year, not falling, despite public reform pledges from payers.
The result is a job that costs a practice real money every week and appears in no report.
What the number does not tell you
Two honest caveats.
It is self-reported. Physicians estimating their own administrative hours is not the same as a time-motion study, and people generally overestimate time spent on things they resent. The direction is not in doubt; the decimal place is.
It is an average across specialties. A dermatology practice doing cosmetic work and a rheumatology practice prescribing biologics do not live in the same world. If you want your own number, count authorizations for one week and multiply.
The part that is actually fixable
Very little of that 13 hours requires clinical judgement. The physician's decision does. Knowing which payer wants which form, chasing a portal, and re-submitting with the note attached does not — it requires somebody reliable who knows the payers and does it every day.
That is the difference between work that has to happen inside the practice and work that merely happens inside the practice today.
Source: 2025 AMA Prior Authorization Physician Survey, a nationwide survey of 1,000 practising physicians (400 primary care, 600 specialists).