The American Medical Association’s new article titled “Your burnout risk? How long you’ve been in practice can tell tale” reported on the 3 step plan that PeaceHealth Medical Group is undertaking to reduce their physician’s feelings of burnout.
Listen to the episode to hear how an improved onboarding process, giving providers the tools to fix their own practice, and developing clinical leaders are part of the strategy.
Click to expand and read this episode's transcript.
Erik Sunset: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to the DocBuddy journal and your host, Erik Sunset. This episode is being recorded on Tuesday, September 26th. Really glad you’re here. And before we go just a second longer into the podcast, be sure you’re subscribed on apple pods, Spotify, and now YouTube. You’re also able to watch and listen to the entire catalog of the DocBuddy journal on DocBuddy.com. So, thanks again for joining us. And today in what I believe is a first for the DocBuddy journal, we’re going to be covering a new report from the American medical association that was published today. So a little same-day coverage, a little same-day reporting. I’m excited about that. Love to bring you our audience, the most fresh, the best news that we can possibly find. And this new article from the AMA is titled your burnout risk. How long you’ve been in practice can tell tale. And like I said, this is a brand new article from our friends at the American medical [00:01:00] association. Let’s get right into it. So the article starts that middle career appears to be an especially challenging time for physicians. According to this exclusive AMA survey. The results of the survey signal, a pressing need to tailor efforts to promote physician satisfaction. Reduce burnout and improve retention based on where doctors are in their careers. More than 13,000 responses from physicians and non-physician providers across 30 states were received from more than 70 health systems that participated in the AMS. Organizational biopsy report. Now that is a registered trademark, the AMS organizational biopsy. And you can see just how seriously they take it with 13,000 responses from 30, say across 70 health systems. So this isn’t a small sample size. This is what you’d call statistically significant.
To continue this AMA benchmarking reports, which again is exclusive to the [00:02:00] AMA and it’s not published anywhere else. There reflects 20, 22 trends in six key performance indicators. Like. Job satisfaction, job stress, burnout, and tend to leave an organization. Feeling valued by an organization and total hours spent per week on work-related activities. Known as time spent. Here’s what the 2022 AMA data reveals about physician burnout rates. And how they vary based on the numbers of years since completing residency or fellowship training. For those one to five years post-training burnout rates are 54%. So roughly half at six to 10 years, post-training. That burnout sensation increases to 61%. Then from 11 to 15 years, 59%. 16 to 20 years at 56%. And then those 20 or more years post-training report feelings of burnout at a rate of 46%. [00:03:00]
Meanwhile, and really despite all of this self-reported burnouts, meanwhile, job satisfaction was highest among physicians who were five or fewer years out of training as the data shows. As well as among doctors of 20 plus years since residency or fellowship. Per term respondents also experienced higher job satisfaction. Additionally about half. So 52% of physicians is more than 20 years of practice felt valued by their organization. That compares with only 41% of those in the sixth tenure post-training category.
At PeaceHealth medical group, PHM G based in Vancouver, Washington, there were 362 responses to their organizational biopsy of which 60% were physicians. This particular survey uncovered that 59% of physicians who are six to 10 years. Post-training reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout. That compares with a 51.3% [00:04:00] burnout rate among doctors who are one to five years. Post-training. This 10 point increase in feelings of burnout between those who are six to 10 years post-training and those who are between one to five years, post training rang, alarm bells at peace health. Here’s what they’re doing about it.
Their first step was to improve their onboarding process. Quote, it became really compelling to us when a newer clinician came onto our wellbeing committee and he described his experience of onboarding. This is Dr. Patricia wooden family, physician and system director for clinician wellbeing. The quote continues. We realized we had worked really hard to recruit this highly trained specialist for a community that had a high level of need. And then we were failing him. End quote. The new and improved onboarding process involves a handoff from the recruitment team to an onboarding specialist who works with the physician, managing paperwork, appointments, answering questions, and helping with moving details. The next step PeaceHealth took was to give doctors tools to fix their practice. For example, physicians who quote, feel [00:05:00] like they’re really struggling with documentation. There are six hour long sessions during six months where we focused on using the EMR more effectively. If they feel like they’re struggling with burnout, there are six sessions that are unwell being doctor wouldn’t said. She continues. The thing that works is we don’t tell them what to focus on. They select what they want to work on, set their own goals, and we provide the time support and encouragement. And then finally in their three-pronged approach, PeaceHealth has made a dedicated effort to develop clinical leaders. Helping our leaders understand that keeping themselves well, isn’t just cute or fluffy. It’s critical to keeping the other people who work with them. Well, doctor wouldn’t said. Also improving their ability to makes a very dramatic improvement on the experience of all the people who work for them. End quote. So let’s break this down a little bit. Want to give you doc buddies perspective on this? It’s really that both improving the [00:06:00] onboarding process and developing clinical leaders. These are both great organizational objectives and they’re great organizational objectives, whether you’re talking about physicians or any other type of employee. But giving doctors the tools they need to fix their practice is maybe the most impactful improvement of the three. We know that physician burnout is primarily driven by physician frustration with the health it software is that they are more or less and usually more required to use. And we know that this is a leading indicator to a tsunami of early physician retirement. And even non-interest in the profession from those not attending medical school.
So, unless something very seriously changes with our healthcare ecosystem. The use of these legacy health, it softwares these legacy EHR PMs is going to continue. I mean, really clinical workflows and reimbursement workflows are entirely [00:07:00] dependent on them. So when you enable physicians to learn how to use and then optimize their use of the health it software is that they must use PeaceHealth is doing something kind of brilliant. And here’s why. They are reframing the discussion from the software is a burden to me, the provider. And they’re reframing this to something much more powerful, which is a new discussion around if you feel like you’re being slowed down by your software, set aside the time to visit our training lab so you can actually get good at using it. And accountability is now with the individual responsible for the use of the software. And that’s a good thing. In my view. Part of the reason for that is going back to. My decade and EHR land often providers will get a really minimal dose of EHR training, right? Has they’re going live. And then they receive next to zero ongoing training. So there’s nothing after the fact they’re thrown into it. With the bare [00:08:00] minimum effective dose of VHR training and then nothing after the fact. And that’s not necessarily. The fault of the vendors either. Many vendors go to great lengths to host annual user conferences or regional user group meetings. So that ongoing training is available to their provider users, but it’s not always something that the providers take the vendor up on. I mean, you look at it more holistically. How good at something? Would you be. If you never practiced it. Certainly not as good as you could be. Even if the overall software experience is poor. Overall, I applaud the effort from PeaceHealth. I think their heads are in the right space and especially interesting use of data to be able to segment. Physicians post-training levels of satisfaction. Relative to how many years they’ve been. Post-training. So it conclusion we’ll wrap this rather short podcast episode up that for any healthcare organizations who want to seriously reduce their symptoms of physician burnout, the very [00:09:00] best thing you can do is visit doc bunny.com. View our solutions, which expand from the practice to being on call to the surgery center. And even beyond that, Fill out our contact form. We’ll be happy to show you any, or all of our solutions at a time. That’s convenient for you. On behalf of the entire doc lake team. Thank you for listening. Be sure you’re subscribed on apple podcasts or Spotify or both. In addition to YouTube so that you can always get the freshest, newest episodes of the DocBuddy journal. And until next time, I’m your host, Erik sunset. We’ll talk to you again soon.