Shortage of medical assistants: 3 ways to ease your medical practice’s administrative workload

The shortage of medical assistants is making day-to-day work increasingly difficult for Swiss practices. And when staffing gets tight, administrative work is often the first area to absorb the pressure. In this context, recruitment remains essential, but it is not the only lever. Here are 3 methods you can apply to reduce workload effectively.

Discover OneDoc for medical practices

Even when staffing is short, the practice still has to keep running. Administrative tasks then become harder to manage with the same consistency, even as patient requests, calls, and follow-ups continue to come in. In Zurich, the INFRAS study estimates this pressure at around 12 missing medical assistants per 100 physicians, or nearly 440 full-time positions.

This situation is all the more sensitive because expectations placed on medical assistants have increased. Their tasks have become more diverse, while practices are still struggling to recruit at the pace they need.

The administrative burden in the healthcare system is described as growing by the FOPH.

Today, the role of medical assistants covers much more than reception: it also includes organizing practice administration, managing patient data, and monitoring several internal processes, which naturally increases the workload carried by teams.

In addition, the FMH points out that patient documentation tasks now take up 20% of hospital physicians’ time (that is 119 minutes per day!).

As the Swiss population ages, practices’ needs are increasing, while the talent pool remains insufficient. The number of people in training is increasing, but not enough to cover the needs of practices. According to the INFRAS study, only around half of practices offer apprenticeships, which limits renewal in the profession. Another factor adds to this: many graduates leave the profession immediately after their apprenticeship, further worsening the shortage.

Added to this is stronger competition between employers. Salary recommendations exist, but they are published at the cantonal level and are not uniform, which makes it harder for practices to remain competitive against other healthcare organizations.

When recruitment takes time, the challenge is not just waiting for the right candidate. It is also making sure the remaining team does not burn out on poorly distributed or unnecessarily time-consuming tasks.

These three methods can already make a real difference in your practice’s day-to-day work.

When the team is under pressure, the boundaries between tasks tend to become less clear. Very different activities end up being handled by the same people simply because things have to keep moving.

But not every task requires the same level of expertise. Some tasks are better suited to a trained medical assistant. Others mainly involve reception, organization, or administrative follow-up. As long as this distinction is not clearly defined, you risk using qualified staff for tasks that could be better distributed.

To help you, you can set up a table that lists requests and the people assigned to them.

When the team is reduced, handling everything at the same level becomes counterproductive. Some tasks need to be handled immediately, while others can be grouped, postponed, or processed at dedicated times during the day.

The goal is therefore to define clear priorities. Urgent requests, information that has a direct impact on care, or situations requiring a quick response must be distinguished from more routine administrative tasks. This prioritization helps reduce constant interruptions and prevents the team from spending the entire day reacting to urgent issues.

In practice, this can be done with simple rules: handling certain types of requests at specific times, or using prioritization methods such as the Eisenhower matrix.

To learn more about methods that help you prioritize tasks in a medical practice, read our article

When staff are missing, the first question is not always who to recruit next. It is often just as useful to ask what could be done more simply.

In many practices, a significant amount of administrative time is lost in avoidable back-and-forth: calls to schedule appointments, manual follow-ups, duplicate data entry, incomplete forms, scattered messages, or information that is difficult to find.

Here are some digital tools you can easily implement to sustainably reduce the administrative workload in your medical practice.

• Online appointment booking reduces call volume
• Automatic reminders help reduce missed appointments
• Digital notes and forms prevent some manual re-entry
• Automatic transcription tools for consultation notes
• An automated phone assistant can help you answer calls when the front desk is overloaded
• A well-integrated practice management software reduces friction between the different steps of the patient journey

Digitalization does not replace a medical assistant. However, it can remove part of the administrative burden weighing on their work.

Day-to-day adjustments are a good first step and relatively easy to implement. However, to avoid being impacted by the shortage in the medium to long term, INFRAS also highlights several structural approaches, including strengthening training and measures to better stabilize the profession.

The shortage of medical assistants will not be solved overnight. However, you can already act on one very concrete point: time lost to administration.

Clarifying roles, distributing tasks better, and simplifying what can be simplified often helps relieve the team faster than you might expect. In a tight recruitment market, reducing administrative workload is not a minor organizational detail. It is a concrete way to give your teams more breathing room, without having to recruit.

• Ärztegesellschaft des Kantons Zürich. (2026, February 11). Dem MPA-Mangel entgegenwirken.
• INFRAS. (2026, March 12). Fehlende Praxisassistent:innen: Status quo und Lösungsansätze für den Kanton Zürich.
• Office fédéral de la santé publique (OFSP). Charge administrative dans le système de santé.
• Schaller, P., Gaspoz, J.-M., & Chopard, P. (2020). Médecins hospitaliers : croissance continue de la charge administrative. Revue Médicale Suisse.