When Sutter Health brought its physician well-being leaders together in person after the COVID-19 public health emergency, the goal was simple but important: help people doing similar work across a large health system get to know one another, learn from one another and begin to move in the same direction.
The meeting was also a turning point.
It was Sutter’s first in-person well-being leader gathering since the public emergency and only the third such gathering in the health system’s history, said Jill Kacher Cobb, MD, an anesthesiologist and chief wellness officer for Sutter Health. The response from leaders was clear: They wanted to keep meeting.
“That connection with one another is so incredibly important,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said.
Now Sutter has built that connection into its well-being infrastructure. The health system holds monthly well-being leader meetings, with an in-person retreat every six months. The most recent retreat, called “Impact through alignment,” focused on helping well-being leaders use survey data, identify shared priorities, improve communication and prepare for a 2026 focus on peer support.
For other health systems, the lesson is clear: Physician well-being work needs more than good ideas. It needs structure, shared priorities and regular touch points that help leaders turn data into action.
Sutter 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.
Build the rhythm
The retreat grew out of Sutter Health’s effort to restart a systemwide well-being leadership cadence after the COVID-19 public health emergency. The AMA helped Sutter Health launch the initial leader retreat at the end of August and beginning of September 2026. That gathering brought together leaders who had been working on well-being for years with others who were newer to the role.
“This provided that initial touchpoint for people to get to know one another and learn from one another, along with challenges they are facing,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. The retreat also helped “to begin to share and spread knowledge across the organization.”
The retreat was “incredibly successful,” she said. By the end, participants asked whether they could meet in person every six months.
Sutter Health already had recently initiated monthly well-being leader meetings. The new model keeps that monthly connection in place while making one meeting every six months an in-person retreat. That structure gives leaders a regular place to share progress, compare challenges and align around what comes next.
The approach also reflects a broader reality of well-being work: A single meeting rarely changes a system. But repeated, intentional meetings can build trust and momentum over time.
As the leader in physician well-being, the AMA provides organizational solutions that help physicians and health systems optimize practice efficiency, reduce burnout, and rediscover the Joy in Medicine®.
Align around priorities
At the most recent retreat, Dr. Kacher Cobb shared an update from Sutter Health’s Office of Wellbeing and connected the work to the organization’s mission of “patients first and people always.” The retreat also reviewed how Sutter is building a more comprehensive workplace well-being program across the health system.
The theme—impact through alignment—was intentional.
In a large health system, well-being leaders may sit in different medical groups, hospitals or local teams. They may also be trying to solve similar problems without always knowing who else is working on them. The retreat created space to compare those efforts and look for areas where alignment could help.
Over the previous six months, Sutter leaders had begun to align around several work streams. Those included survey strategy, well-being communication, support resources, ease of work and collaboration tied to the AMA Joy in Medicine Health System Recognition Program.
The goal was not to make every local program look the same. Instead, it was to identify where common tools, shared priorities and stronger communication could make the work easier and more effective.
Turn data into action
A major focus of the retreat was helping leaders use well-being survey data in practical ways.
Sutter Health created a “data to action” playbook to guide leaders on how to use survey results to improve workplace well-being. At the retreat, leaders were asked to bring their own survey data and identify one or two wins, along with two or three opportunities for improvement.
They then broke into small groups to compare what they were seeing. The goal was to identify where challenges overlapped and where they differed. Leaders also discussed which opportunities were best handled locally and which required system-level support.
That distinction matters. Some well-being challenges are deeply local, shaped by a department, team or practice environment. Others—such as documentation burden, in-basket messaging or work after work—often need broader operational support.
Dr. Kacher Cobb said the retreat helped leaders see that many of them were working on the same issues.
“Many well-being leaders are trying to solve for some of the same challenges,” she said. “Our leaders now know who to reach out to help solve for similar challenges and in some cases join forces to make an even greater impact. Also, some challenges benefit from system support.”
Make work easier
During the retreat, several recurring opportunities emerged. These included in-basket messaging, documentation, work after work, communication and leadership alignment.
Those themes are familiar across medicine. They also show why well-being work cannot sit apart from operations. If physicians are spending too much time in the EHR or struggling with messages after hours, the solution requires more than telling people to build resilience.
Sutter Health leaders discussed digital tools and other system-level efforts that may help make work easier. Veena Jones, MD, and Navdeep Singh, MD, also spoke at the retreat about digital solutions, including tools designed to ease clinical work.
At the same time, Dr. Kacher Cobb emphasized that much of well-being remains local. A system can create resources and tools, but local leaders still need to know what their physicians and teams are experiencing each day as some challenges may be unique to different sites.
That is why the retreat focused on both levels at once. It focused on what the system can help solve, and what local leaders should take back to their teams.
Communicate more than once
Another major theme was communication. Sutter leaders discussed how to make well-being resources easier to find and how to tell the story of progress over time.
That work includes written communication, such as emails and newsletters. But Dr. Kacher Cobb said leaders also discussed the need to reach people in other ways, including one-on-one conversations, department meetings and leadership meetings.
This matters because many organizations already have support resources, but physicians and other health professionals may not know where to find them. Others may hear about a resource once, then forget it exists when they need it.
At the retreat, leaders talked about communication as a strategy. That means repeating key messages, using multiple channels and showing progress over time.
It also means being clear about what support exists at the system level and what support exists locally. In a large health system, those resources may differ by medical group, hospital or region. Aligning communication can help leaders make those resources easier to use.
Strengthen peer support
The retreat also helped Sutter Health define one of its major priorities for 2026: making support easier, especially through peer support.
“Many of our individual level entities do not have peer support programs, and then the ones that do, it's just such a gradation of the level of sophistication of their peer support programs,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “We have a couple that are quite sophisticated.”
Then there are other peer support programs where it is “one person who makes phone calls when something arises, so how can we help them out as a system?” she said, emphasizing it’s about “bringing a group together to look at how we can really create more impact for supporting our people and leveraging the health system.”
That variation creates an opportunity. By bringing leaders together, Sutter Health can identify what is working well, where programs need support and how to align the work where it makes sense.
“One of those ways is through really building out our peer support program,” Dr. Cobb said.
Peer support can be especially important in medicine, where physicians may experience stress, grief, adverse events or other difficult moments but may hesitate to seek help. A strong peer support structure can make it easier for physicians and other clinicians to connect with someone who understands the work.
For Sutter, the 2026 focus is not just about adding another program. It is about making sure support is visible, accessible and connected across the system.
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