It ’s time for hospitals to publicly disclose physician satisfaction, burnout, and suicide rates

We are in the midst of an epidemic of physician burnout, depression and suicide. Although the causes are debatable, there can be little doubt that increasing demands for financial performance and patient satisfaction, decreasing autonomy, and physicians’ individual liability for systemic risk management decisions in a majority of practice settings are significant contributors to these adverse outcomes. At the same time physician burnout, depression, and suicide rates have been rising; tremendous progress has been made in both the culture of safety and reduction of iatrogenic harms in large U.S. health care organizations over the past 20 years. A key driver of these improvements has been CMS-mandated public disclosure of patient safety and satisfaction data for hospitals. Although much work remains to be done, this mandated disclosure has been highly successful at forcing organizations to address and reduce systemic safety risks. Physicians have been at the “sharp end” of many systemic changes wrought by public disclosure of safety and performance data, yet the well-being of physicians themselves has never been a focus of these data. I propose that the most promising strategy for reducing physician burnout, depression and suicide is to apply the same data-driven approach to these outcomes that has been successfully used to improve patient safety: Health care systems should track and publicly disclose data on physician satisfaction, burnout, and suicide just a...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Psychiatry Source Type: blogs