Health system leaders track safety, quality and finances with precision. Yet one of the strongest signals of organizational health can be harder to see: physician well-being. If leaders want to move beyond good intentions and toward real change, they need measurement that is credible, consistent and tied to action.
That is where the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy® comes in. The tool helps practices and health systems capture the drivers of professional well-being in a way that supports improvement—not just reporting. When physicians see that their feedback leads to specific fixes, it reinforces the message that your voice matters, and it shapes how your organization works.
“The Organizational Biopsy stands out for a few key reasons. One is that it’s comprehensive and it has a multi-domain assessment. It goes far beyond simply measuring burnout. It comprehensively assesses the key domains that influence physician well-being,” said Heather Farley, MD, MHCDS, vice president of professional satisfaction for the AMA. “It paints that robust picture of the factors that drive well-being or distress.”
“In contrast, one-off burnout surveys focus narrowly on burnout symptoms without uncovering the root causes or associated organizational dynamics,” said Dr. Farley, noting “the organizational biopsy questions are evidence-based, externally validated and allow for meaningful benchmarking.”
“Organizations receive the results with access to national comparison data so that you can understand how your organization performs relative to peer organizations, and that drives accountability and focused improvement,” she said. “Lastly, the Organizational Biopsy provides actionable insights by linking those survey domains directly to intervention strategies.”
Done well, measuring physician well-being becomes a system-level guide for prioritizing resources, testing interventions and tracking progress over time. It also helps leaders avoid common missteps, such as collecting more data than they can use or asking questions that do not connect to decisions.
To help practices and health systems better assess physician burnout and well-being, Dr. Farley shares what leaders should keep in mind about survey timing, what to measure, how to improve participation and mistakes to avoid. This includes:
- The best time to launch a well-being survey.
- What essential domains health systems should measure.
- Which survey questions to never change.
- Tactics to improve survey participation.
- Mistakes to avoid when surveying physicians.
