Make The Clinician Burnout Epidemic A National Priority

The health care workforce burnout epidemic is a national crisis. The time to act like it is now. Despite the promise of delivery system reform, especially following passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the risk of burnout among physicians (and other health care professionals) represents a significant threat to system-wide achievement of Triple Aim goals: better patient experience of care, improved population health, and lower costs. In the rush to implement various initiatives, including additional reporting requirements and adoption of new technology such as electronic health records (EHR), and coupled with increasing pressure to increase throughput and reduce costs, most physicians are being asked to provide high-quality, compassionate care with less time and resources to effectively engage patients. This “work compression,” wherein clinicians have to do the same amount of work in less time, occurs on a backdrop of steadily increasing medical complexity in the forms of multimorbidity and increased prevalence of chronic disease and often physically and psychologically challenging work environments. In response, over half (54 percent) of surveyed physicians in the U.S. now reported at least one symptom of burnout in 2014 — a 9 percent increase from three years prior. The response from the physician community has been passionate and pervasive in the pages of both academic medical journals and in lay media. Yet, despite the growing chorus of concern over ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured Health Professionals Hospitals Organization and Delivery Quality doctor burnout EHRs physician perspective Physicians triple aim Source Type: blogs