As health systems across the country intensify efforts to address physician burnout, Advocate Health continues to take a measured look at how the organization tracks—and responds to—well-being. The goal is not to ask more of an already stretched workforce, but to learn smarter from fewer questions.
While there were more responses than the previous year with the combination of an internal survey and the AMA survey, Advocate Health is reimagining its approach to gathering valuable insights in a way that respects physicians’ time and reduces survey fatigue. Instead, the health system is aiming for approaches that respect physicians’ time while still guiding systemwide action on well-being.
Advocate received gold from the AMA’s Joy in Medicine® Health System Recognition Program, and their journey does not end there. As the health system continues to monitor their well-being initiatives while also implementing new ones, they are also looking at what else can be done to not only further reduce physician burnout but maintain gold-level recognition.
With the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy®, Advocate Health has a clear path to learning how physicians feel and what they need to continue to improve well-being and reduce burnout across the system. And with years of data at their disposal, Advocate Health can make continual improvements in the well-being space.
“We have trending data over three years in North Carolina and Georgia markets so we can look to see how we’re doing, but it has to be a delicate balance on how often we ask for the voices of our physicians,” said Suzanna Fox, MD, an ob-gyn and EVP chief physician officer of Advocate Health.
Advocate Health is part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Comparing survey data over the years
Advocate Health has been measuring physician well-being for several years, which has proven to be helpful for Dr. Fox and her team as they assess current initiatives and implement new ones. It’s also key to their maintenance of gold-level recognition from the AMA.
“We do look at the year-over-year trends in both of our surveys to look at areas of improvement and opportunity areas,” she said. “We know as a group it’s very important to the AMA that we’re interested, obviously, in reducing burnout and stress and improving the intent to leave.”
In fact, “we have had dramatic improvement in turnover of our physicians and advance practice professionals,” said Dr. Fox. “And we believe that it is related to this work and the culture we’re developing here.”
“We also then look at the macro level within each of our service lines and care divisions,” she said. “We take the data that we have in bulk and look at it as an organization, but then we take it to the division, to the area, to the service line.”
With the data, if a service line is struggling one way or another, Advocate Health’s “Best Place to Care” team works with them, goes over the data, looks at the trending data and helps create action plans.
This helps “to really make sure that we're looking at hotspots and trends where we have a need to improve,” said Dr. Fox, emphasizing that “our service line leaders have been very engaged in this work.”
“Sometimes one service line may be working on one thing, and another service line may be working on another, but it's all information that we have identified from one of our surveys,” she said. “For example, our emergency departments have led several initiatives around workplace violence mitigation based on the voices of their clinicians.
“In the women’s service line, there has been a greater focus on onboarding and building community for physicians hired in their first year,” Dr. Fox added, noting “these are examples of how our leadership teams take in the feedback relevant to their areas to action plan and make relevant changes based on the feedback voiced.”
As the leader in physician well-being, the AMA is reducing physician burnout by removing administrative burdens and providing real-world solutions to help doctors rediscover the Joy in Medicine.
Working with the AMA to set up surveys
“The AMA is instrumental. They have been key partners in us setting up our survey,” said Dr. Fox, who noted that “we have standard questions, but they also allow us to create custom questions that we develop based on what we’re hearing from our physicians to see if we’re having improvement in these areas.”
Additionally, “the AMA is very generous with their time, so we are able to sit down with them across each division, and they help us understand our data,” she said. “Most importantly, they also help us understand where we are in comparison with the national trends, which we wouldn’t normally have without the assistance of the AMA and the Organizational Biopsy.”
“We couldn’t have gotten the gold-level recognition without measuring with the Organizational Biopsy because a lot of our strategies are informed by what we hear from our clinicians in these surveys,” Dr. Fox said. “And having the AMA distill down the data in the way that they do helps us move forward in this work that I don’t think we could do by ourselves.”
For Advocate Health, the point of measuring well-being isn’t the survey itself, it’s what happens next. By using years of trend data and the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy to pinpoint well-being needs, leaders can focus on targeted fixes while being mindful of survey fatigue. The message is clear: This work doesn’t end with gold-level recognition. It’s maintained through a steady cycle of listening, learning and acting so physicians feel the difference in their day-to-day practice.
“This is what gets me up in the morning. This work is more important than almost anything we do because without it, we’re not taking the best care of our patients and they deserve that,” said Dr. Fox. “Of all the things that I do, this doesn’t feel like work because this is what I love to do and I’m privileged to be able to lead it.”
Download the 2025 AMA Joy in Medicine® magazine (log into your AMA account to view) to see whether your organization is part of the prestigious group of 164 organizations across 40 states and the District of Columbia that are currently recognized for their dedication to physician well-being.
AMA STEPS Forward® resources offer innovative, physician-developed strategies that allow doctors and their organizations to thrive in the new health care environment. These resources can help you prevent burnout, improve efficiency and enhance patient care.
For example, the toolkit “Assessment of Burnout in Physicians and Other Clinicians,” is enduring material and will help physicians and other health professionals:
- Communicate objective data to leadership and frontline clinicians.
- Intervene with programs and policies to specifically support areas of need.
- Track year-to-year progress based on interventions.
This toolkit is part of the AMA Ed Hub™️, an online learning platform that brings together high-quality CME, maintenance of certification, and educational content from trusted sources, all in one place—with activities relevant to you, automated credit tracking, and reporting for some states and specialty boards. Learn more about AMA CME accreditation.
