The fight against physician burnout: AMA awards 22 healthcare organizations for their efforts

The American Medical Association (AMA) has chosen 22 healthcare organizations to receive the first Joy in Medicine Recognition.

Joy in Medicine is the new distinction offered by the AMA to recognize healthcare organizations who have committed to improve physician satisfaction and reducing burnout, according to a news release from the association.

“It is a great honor to recognize the outstanding achievements of the organizations selected for the Joy in Medicine Recognition,” said AMA Board Chair Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH in the release. “These organizations are true leaders in promoting physician well-being and continue to make a difference in the lives of our nation’s health care workforce.”

Candidate organizations, as well as their efforts to reduce burnout, were graded against criteria which demonstrate competencies in commitment, assessment, leadership efficiency of practice environment, teamwork, and support, the release said.

The inaugural class of recipients are:

·      Ascension Medical Group, St. Louis, Mo.

·      Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Boston, Mass.

·      Boston Medical Center, of Boston

·      Cleveland Clinic, of Cleveland, Ohio

·      Geisinger Health System, of Danville, Penn.

·      Gould Medical Group, of Modesto, Calif.

·      Heartland Health Centers, of Chicago

·      Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai, of New York

·      Mayo Clinic, of Rochester, Minnesota

·      National Capital Region Military Health System, of Bethesda, Md.

·      Northwestern Medicine, of Chicago

·      Oak Street Health, of Chicago

·      Ochsner Health System, of New Orleans, La.

·      Southern California Permanente Group, of Calif.

·      St. Vincent Medical Group, of Ind.

·      Stanford Health Care, of Palo Alto, Calif.

·      University of Colorado School of Medicine, of Aurora, Colo.

·      UNC Health Care, of Chapel Hill, NC

·      UPMC, Pittsburgh, Penn.

·      University of Rochester Medical Center, of Rochester, NY

·      Virginia Mason Medical Center, of Seattle, Wash.

·      Wake Forest School of Medicine, of Winston-Salem, NC

Many physicians consider burnout to be a growing crisis in medicine. An exclusive Medical Economics survey released earlier this year found that 92 percent of physicians said they felt burned out at some point in their career while 68 percent said they felt burned out at the time they took the survey.

The Joy in Medicine Recognition program is part of the AMA’s Practice Transformation Initiative which seeks to advance evidence-based solutions that fill the gap of knowledge in solving the physician burnout crisis, the release said.

"The Joy in Medicine Recognition Program is designed by the AMA to serve as a guide and catalyst for organizations who are interested, engaged and committed in efforts to fight the root causes of physician burnout,” Ehrenfeld says in the release. “The AMA is optimistic that the program will serve as a roadmap to reduce burnout within organizations and unite the health care community around systematic changes that will energize physicians in their life’s work of caring for patients."

The founding of this new program was based on the Health Affairs blog post “Physician Burnout is a Public Health Crisis: A Message to our Fellow CEOs” and JAMA Internal Medicine research article “The Business Case for Investing in Physician Well-being” as well as the efforts that resulted in the “Charter on Physician Well-being,” the release said.

According to the news release the AMA works on every front to address the physician burnout crisis through research, collaborations, advocacy and leadership to make physician burnout a thing of the past.