Overview
- In 2017, a multidisciplinary well-being task force was established at a Norton Healthcare in Kentucky, a metropolitan medical group with 1,476 providers, to mitigate the factors that lead to physician burnout.
Organization Name
Norton Healthcare
Organization Type
- Community health system
Tech Involved
- Electronic medical record
- Website
Team Members Involved
- Physicians
Workflow Steps
Intervention: The intervention was the creation of a new, multidisciplinary well-being task force that had the following goals: offer leadership training to providers and establish a provider-only hotline to offer free legal guidance and counseling; 2) improve Epic workflow and reduce the number of unnecessary checkpoints a provider has to go through; 3) create social spaces for providers and their families to connect regularly including targeted events for sub-groups such as female-led formal lectures for female providers; 4) facilitate feedback between providers and executive medical directors annually. The achievements of the well-being task force were publicized in a newsletter.
Process: Prior to the creation of the task force, an internal survey was conducted to measure the emotional, psychological, and clinical stressors that practitioners faced. This helped guide the priorities of the well-being task force. Leaders from all different specialties led the task force. For three consecutive years, the physician well-being index tool was repeated to reassess the improvement in well-being and re-establish goals. Each year, the index scores were compared with the national index scores as well as the scores from the prior year.
Lessons: Overall, the task force was successful at improving provider well-being in three years by streamlining the provision of care and creating a healthy social environment for provider connection. Utilizing Stanford’s well-recognized model that describes reasons behind provider burnout allowed for a more comprehensive task force agenda. However, since the well-being index score data was aggregated, the task force was unable to identify providers who would benefit from additional support. Moreover, the response rates for the well-being index surveys varied by specialty, by year, and were likely impacted by self-selection bias.
Sources
Shields LBE, Jennings JT, Honaker JT. Multidisciplinary approach to enhancing provider well-being in a metropolitan medical group in the United States. BMC Fam Pract. 2020;21(1):262. Published 2020 Dec 6. doi:10.1186/s12875-020-01323-6
Innovators
- Lisa B.E. Shields, MD
Editors
- Azan Zahir Virji, MPH
Location
Louisville, KY
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