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Surescripts
Provider burnout spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the crisis had been building for at least a decade—and statistics show that it continues to unfold. In 2024, more than 1 in 4 medical groups saw a physician leave or retire early due to burnout. Combined with staffing shortages and an aging physician workforce, burnout threatens to reduce access to care in areas where providers are already stretched thin, like many rural areas.
To take a pulse on how these trends are evolving in 2025, we surveyed 503 prescribers (including physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners) and pharmacists. How is burnout affecting clinicians today? Where could technology or process changes improve the picture? Their answers highlight areas for continued focus as well as innovation.
However, there’s still a long way to go. Most clinicians agreed that provider burnout is still a major challenge, with 74% of pharmacists and 73% of prescribers saying it’s one of the biggest issues in healthcare (second only to the cost of care).
Clinicians have too much administrative work & not enough time
What causes burnout in healthcare? For more insight, we asked about the everyday challenges clinicians face.
At the top of the list: lack of time to address tasks, selected as the number-one daily challenge by 40% of pharmacists and 23% of prescribers.
Our survey suggests that much of this time pressure comes from administrative work. The second biggest challenge for both pharmacists and prescribers was administrative tasks such as paperwork and phone calls.
Among administrative tasks, prior authorizations for medications are particularly painful. Nearly all respondents said this process in itself increases burnout.
Opportunity remains to reduce faxes & other manual work
Technology promises to save time and streamline manual processes—yet some of the technologies clinicians currently use are falling short in precisely these areas.
When asked about processing medication prior authorizations, both pharmacists and prescribers said they were least satisfied with their system’s efforts to eliminate outdated communications (such as faxes) and administrative work. Only 10% of prescribers and 14% of pharmacists said they were very satisfied with their prior authorization system’s ability to eliminate faxes.
This means prior authorization systems are lagging behind the broader systems used to manage patient care. But even here, only 48% of pharmacists and 49% of prescribers were very satisfied with their software system’s ability to reduce faxes, and just 36% of pharmacists and 39% of prescribers were very satisfied with its ability to reduce administrative work overall.
On top of these challenges, prescribers face additional administrative work throughout the prescribing process. Cost and coverage factors are especially challenging to navigate.
Collaboration & interoperability across the care team are key
Clearly, solving burnout is partly about removing burdens like administrative work, inefficient processes and other demands on clinicians’ time that steal focus from patients.
But it’s not only about what we can take away. Our survey also shows high demand for healthcare technology to add more interoperability and collaboration across the care team. Most pharmacists and prescribers are not yet very satisfied with their software systems’ efforts in these areas.
Of course, to enable easier intelligence sharing among clinicians, healthcare leaders themselves need to collaborate across organizations and across the industry.
One such collaboration is The Sequoia Project’s Interoperability Matters Pharmacy Workgroup (cochaired by Surescripts), founded earlier this year to ensure that interoperability spans all parts of the evolving care team. Stakeholders including pharmacies, health IT vendors, payers, providers and industry associations will work together to close gaps in pharmacy interoperability—which can ultimately help close gaps in care.
This will be particularly important for rural communities facing provider shortages. Initiatives like the federal government’s recently launched Rural Health Transformation Program should take clinicians’ demands for greater interoperability and collaboration into account when considering to support access to care in these areas, where pharmacies may be easier to find than primary care providers.
In the meantime, we can build on this year’s hopeful improvement in clinician burnout by giving more clinicians solutions that relieve administrative burden and empower team-based care, such as:
- Direct messaging to support care collaboration across organizations
- Easy access to prescription benefit coverage and pricing information in prescribing and pharmacy workflows
- E-prescribing transactions that let prescribers and pharmacists exchange information promptly without faxes or phone calls
- Prior authorization automation that can eliminate much of the work of managing requests
By addressing burnout through both technology and industrywide collaboration, we can help clinicians remain in their roles and deliver exceptional care wherever patients seek it.
Surescripts partnered with APCO Insight to conduct an online survey of 250 pharmacists and 253 prescribers between May 28 and June 16, 2025.
Pharmacist requirements:
- Current role as a pharmacist at a retail pharmacy, hospital or health system
- 2–30 years of experience
- 25+ prescriptions filled each week
Prescriber requirements:
- Current role as a physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner
- At least 50% of work time spent on patient care
- One or more prescriptions written each week
Recommended citation: Surescripts, “Care Teams Seek Tools to Improve the Patient Experience,” September 2025.