Health care is driven by a finely tuned combination of data and humanity. One of the tenets of patient care is using data to inform clinical decisions, while considering individual values and a holistic understanding of your patients’ needs. At The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, the commitment to improving physician well-being and addressing burnout is grounded in this same data-driven, human-centered approach.
“These problems and challenges are so complex that you need every voice to be part of finding the right solutions,” Reneathia Baker, MD, associate medical director of people and culture at The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, said during an AMA Insight Network webinar on physician well-being.
The Southeast Permanente Medical Group 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.
As The Southeast Permanente Medical Group sought to move physician well-being beyond one-off efforts and embed it into strategy and culture, it turned to the AMA’s Joy in Medicine® Health System Recognition Program to provide a unifying structure for this work. The AMA Joy in Medicine Program empowers health systems to reduce burnout and build well-being so that physicians and their patients can thrive.
The framework helped Dr. Baker and her team identify opportunities to integrate well-being into everyday operations, strategic planning and organizational culture, all grounded in feedback and data.
As a result, Dr. Baker said, “We had marked improvements in overall physician satisfaction and engagement.”
Burnout has also declined in the medical group. In 2024, 44% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout, a figure that has since declined to 37%.
In 2025, The Southeast Permanente Medical Group earned Silver-level recognition from the Joy in Medicine Program, reflecting the progress toward making well-being an important part of how decisions are made across the organization.
Using data to drive impact
From the outset, Dr. Baker’s vision was to embed a well-being strategy directly into the organization’s overarching strategy. To do this, she coordinated outreach to operational leaders, section chiefs, physician directors and other stakeholders, partnering with them to build well-being initiatives into their annual goals.
“There’s so much change happening across health care now,” said Dr. Baker. “Having our leaders actively engaged to manage that change is a huge part of wellness and mitigating burnout.”
Dr. Baker knew she could not dive into this ambitious effort empty-handed. She and her team leaned heavily on data to identify friction, measure progress and guide targeted interventions.
The team began by partnering with informatics experts to identify data that could both drive and measure the success of well-being initiatives.
“We had an aha! moment, realizing we didn’t have anyone from IT informatics on our well-being committee to help us drive our wellness strategy,” Dr. Baker recalled.
Like many organizations, The Southeast Permanente Medical Group tracks its physician key metrics. However, there is no single industry-standard metric that fully captures physician well-being. Over the years, the organization reviewed engagement and citizenship data, such as physician participation in department and leadership meetings. While informative, these metrics never provided a complete picture of well-being or sustained engagement.
As a result, the team shifted its focus to more meaningful data from the EHR, particularly physician “pajama time,” or time spent working after scheduled work hours. This metric offered a more direct signal of physician burnout risk.
“We know that administrative burden is a great driver of burnout,” Dr. Baker said. “We want to make sure we’re looking closely at how much time people are spending in the EHR outside of work.”
By collaborating closely with the informatics team and analyzing pajama time data, The Southeast Permanente Medical Group is turning insights to actions. The informatics team is actively working on initiatives to improve the EHR experience, including automating certain processes that currently overwhelm physicians’ inboxes. Dr. Baker added that the use of ambient listening has been a huge plus for physicians and has helped reduce time charting.
“The combination of the informatics work and tracking pajama time allows us to see the impact of these initiatives,” said Dr. Baker. “Our theory is that we should see time spent working outside of work decrease as we do more of these other initiatives.”
For example, she added that the use of ambient listening is a huge plus for physicians that has helped reduce time charting.
This data-driven approach also enabled leaders to be more proactive in identifying departments or individuals that may be struggling.
“It allows us to go directly to the individuals or department to figure out what’s happening and how we can support them, so they don’t get to the point of burnout,” said Dr. Baker.
To increase transparency and drive action at all levels, The Southeast Permanente Medical Group added a pajama time metric to its physician dashboards. Making this data visible to department heads, chiefs, operational managers and frontline physicians helps ground conversations and goals to drive meaningful change on the front lines.
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.
Feeling valued as a North Star
EHR-related data has helped integrate well-being into operations and goal setting. But building a true culture of well-being required additional, more human-centered insights.
To address this, Dr. Baker and her team anchored the organization’s well-being strategy around a single, powerful question on the organization’s engagement survey: whether physicians feel valued.
This metric has become a lens for understanding physician burnout, engagement and sense of purpose. By positioning “feeling valued” as the North Star for well-being, The Southeast Permanente Medical Group reinforced that this is a cultural commitment, not a collection of programs and initiatives.
As a result, responses to the statement, “I feel valued at work,” improved from a score of 64 to 69 in 2025, and responses to the statement, “My manager cares about me as a person,” rose from 82 to 85 the same year.
It also signals that physician well-being is as critical to organizational success as performance, access and outcomes.
Championing well-being on the front lines
As well-being has become more integrated into The Southeast Permanente Medical Group’s strategy and operations, Dr. Baker and her team have focused on making that commitment visible beyond leadership and into day-to-day clinical settings.
One key initiative was launching a wellness guides program, modeled after a successful program at Northwest Permanente, which is also part of the AMA Health System Member Program. The program brings together like-minded individuals with a passion for well-being to serve as wellness ambassadors across the organization.
At The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, physicians and administrators in each department serve as trusted, boots-on-the-ground wellness guides. They connect physicians to resources, normalize wellness conversations and ensure well-being remains a departmental priority.
“Our wellness guides sponsor wellness activities, go to department meetings and talk about wellness, so it is top of mind for everyone,” Dr. Baker said. “They also help us communicate wellness messages and run campaigns, like our sleep challenges or healthy eating challenges.”
Since the wellness guide program launched in 2024, engagement scores have increased, particularly around understanding and using available well-being resources.
“That’s a proud moment,” said Dr. Baker. “It’s one thing to develop the resources, but it’s another thing to see people really engaging and utilizing what you’ve put in place.”
A key factor in the program’s success has been recruiting employees who reflect the diversity of roles and departments within the organization.
“Our wellness guides represent all of our employee types,” she said. “They’re then able to speak to those particular groups about specific issues that are pertinent to them in the well-being space, which has been very helpful.”
Recruiting guides who can commit two to four hours of their time can be challenging in a field where time is scarce. However, one of the biggest draws is that the program offers wellness guides professional and leadership development opportunities.
“This role could prepare someone for a leadership role,” Dr. Baker explained. “They’re getting leadership development, coaching and executive exposure. We see it as an opportunity for them to grow their own leadership within the organization.”
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® offers real-world solutions to common challenges in health care today. Explore a variety of innovative, physician-developed resources designed to help prevent physician burnout, optimize workflows, improve well-being and enhance patient care.
