(Your help is needed to influence CEOs nationwide.)
Physician burnout is a public health crisis. Yet many healthcare CEOs don’t fully appreciate the significance of this silent epidemic. Only prioritization by CEOs can bring about the cultural change necessary to address the systemic causes of physician burnout.
Recently I had a thought provoking conversation with a successful healthcare CEO. He had read the Health Affairs blog PHYSICIAN BURNOUT IS A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS: A MESSAGE TO OUR FELLOW HEALTHCARE CEOS. Yet he wasn’t convinced this global statement was sufficiently backed up by enough facts in the brief article.
Through years of personal experience I know that this CEO cares deeply about his patients, his staff and his physicians. He noted as CEO, he already has many priorities. Before his organization takes on an additional priority (addressing physician burnout) he needs to better understand why this issue should displace other pressing concerns. He has been hearing more about the issue in the past couple of years, and he wonders if it deserves the attention it is receiving. He said that he assumed if he could tell me what he was thinking, I could more effectively change his mind on the subject.
He raised a dozen important questions. In order to convince him, and other healthcare executives to expend significant attention and resources to combat physician burnout, I suspect we need to clearly and convincingly answer his questions, heavily supported with evidence based literature.
Your answers to his questions will help CEOs and board members across the country effectively prioritize this silent epidemic.
A dozen questions related to physician burnout (posed by a thoughtful hospital CEO)
1. What can the literature on physician burnout teach us about what will work to resolve this issue?
2. What is the underlying etiology of burnout; is physician burnout an individual response to stimulus versus an industry-wide systemic issue?
3. What is the evidence to suggest that physician burnout is a significant and compelling issue warranting the level of attention it is getting?
4. Regarding physician suicide, the rate is higher than that which is reported in the general public. Is the rate of physician suicide statistically different from that of other highly paid professionals?
5. Is the reporting of only one symptom of physician burnout truly a manifestation of moderate or severe burnout?
6. The Health Affairs blog states that the consequences of burnout threaten our US health system. Some may find the link between having one symptom of burnout and a real threat to the entire health system a pretty big jump. What is the evidence to support this conclusion?
7. If it is the push from outside regulators, legislators, public and private payers, EHR manufacturers, etc. which is the main force contributing to loss of physician autonomy and happiness, won’t we need to effectively address these stakeholders underlying concerns in order to successfully convince them to alter their policies?
8. The Health Affairs blog’s list of responses is heavily weighted to what everyone else needs to do to unburden doctors. If one steps back 20 steps and looks at this from a historical perspective; physicians and providers are being told what to do, because cost is too high and outcomes too poor. We, the insiders in this system, have not effectively convinced the public that:
- we are as safe as we can be
- we don’t waste resources
- we don’t have unwarranted variation
- we are not motivated too frequently by money (with supply creating demand,) and that
- we are producing outcomes equal to other countries that have much lower costs.
Until we internally fix the healthcare delivery system we will continue to see the push for more oversight, more quality measures and more use of data. Won’t pushing back at regulators ultimately fail, unless the underlying reasons for their concern/activism are also successfully resolved?
9. Is the call to alleviate physician burnout due to a significant threat to the entire healthcare ecosystem, or due to the fact that physicians are more powerful? (In that they are highly intelligent, historically autonomous, socially powerful and able to push back against change more successfully than other groups facing similar industry change.)
10. What is the responsibility the individual physician to develop and improve individual resilience (possibly through lifestyle changes related to diet, exercise, sleep, healthy habits etc.) versus what is the responsibility of those of us who oversee large segments of the entire healthcare ecosystem to address systemic causes of physician burnout?
11. Is physician burnout a manifestation of resistance to necessary change within the healthcare ecosystem or something more than that?
12. Will a big public push to address the systemic causes of physician burnout create value, be neutral or create harm for all stakeholders, most importantly the public?
We all want the same things, safe and effective care for our patients, patient satisfaction and cost effectiveness. None of this can happen without a healthy, resilient workforce.
Would you please help by answering a few of these questions? Please feel free to comment or send me an email at Steve@DefoSays.com
I will be sharing the answers to these questions, one or two per week as your answers become robustly convincing.
Thanks in advance and enjoy your summer!