Listening to physicians and acting on what they say has helped Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group strengthen its approach to physician well-being. Now, the medical group is focused on making that approach an even more integral part of how the organization operates.
“We are very intentional about the things that we’re doing, and we’re trying to look at things through that physician wellness and well-being lens,” said Tinisha Cheatham, DO, chief people officer and associate medical director of people, culture and care experience at Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group. “We are focused on operational efficiency, leadership, culture, teamwork, community, mental health support and career development. All at the same time.”
The next phase of the medical group’s Journey to Joy in Medicine® builds on individual well-being initiatives to address broader drivers of physician fulfillment. Leaders are working to embed physician well-being into organizational culture, leadership development, operational decisions and the way physician feedback translates into action.
Mid-Atlantic 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.
Measurement and avoiding survey fatigue
When considering measuring well-being and learning more from physicians, Dr. Cheatham noted that doctors need to be assured:
- The feedback they provide is confidential.
- That leadership actually wants to hear what they have to say.
- That leadership will circle back to show what was done.
“I am beginning a new series in my new role called, ‘You Said, We Did,’” Dr. Cheatham explained.
“We’re making sure that we communicate the things that they have said that we’ve solved for,” Dr. Cheatham continued. “We’ve done it in different ways, but now we’re going to have more focused ways to communicate how we’re closing that feedback loop of what we’ve solved for them.”
“As you continue to communicate all of that, you start to build credibility,” she said. “That visibility and that transparency really creates that credibility that people will then build trust in what we’re doing and what we’re saying.”
The “You Said, We Did” series will be an email from Dr. Cheatham that will be sent out with updates as well as a QR code suggestion box to learn about “clinician friction.”
There will also be two committees that will solicit feedback, which does not include leaders because “we want frontline physicians who are actually in the work, and we want the solutions to come from the ground up,” she explained, noting that one committee is going to focus on clinician friction, and the other one is going to focus on access without privilege. The access without privilege work focuses on ensuring that every patient—regardless of background—can easily access the care they need, when they need it.
This work will be about “looking at solving for those issues and helping to redesign a system,” Dr. Cheatham said. “We’ve already got several ideas by just starting to populate these committees.”
“Anything that we can solve quickly, we’re going to get out there to show what we did and continue to communicate that we hear you and we’re working to solve it for you,” she said.
That feedback loop is one part of a broader strategy to address physician well-being from multiple angles at once.
Addressing well-being from every angle
“We’ve got a lot of pots in the fire, so we can’t get siloed into just one,” Dr. Cheatham said. “We need to keep investing effort in all of them because people need different things at different times.”
At Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, “we’re just really proud that physician well-being is treated as a shared organizational responsibility,” she said. “It’s not just something that physicians are expected to solve on their own. It’s a collaborative approach.”
Changing the culture
Ameya Kulkarni, MD, an interventional cardiologist by training, became the executive medical director of Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group in January 2026. He has started the initial process of changing the culture within the medical group.
“Dr. Kulkarni did a lot of this work prior to me getting this role. … He’s absolutely committed to advancing Permanente medicine,” Dr. Cheatham said. “If you ask what his vision is, he’s demonstrating that our model of care is a powerful solution for healthcare, and for that vision to be successful, our physicians need to feel proud of the work and supported in their practice and connected to the purpose of what we do.”
Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group can be the world’s solution for healthcare, she said. “That starts with our physician well-being, our culture and supporting our physicians to make sure that they feel connected, supported and part of the family.”
When it comes to measuring well-being and learning more from physicians, Dr. Cheatham said because the medical group knows its physicians are the best at what they do and are making a real impact on their patients' lives, the medical group boldly invites patients to review their doctors directly on their Google Business profiles.
“The response has been better than we could have imagined,” Dr. Cheatham said. “Receiving the heartfelt comments and compliments from patients as they are posted has made our physicians feel valued and reinforces the personalized care that we are known for. Since starting this program, participating physicians have received more than 33,000 online Google reviews, 96% of which are 5-star reviews.”
Embed well-being in everything
While receiving recognition is important, Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group is driven by a larger purpose: building a culture of sustained executive sponsorship and strong physician participation.
That means the medical group is “looking at all of the things in our organization and making sure that we see the signs that not only is our physician well-being great,” Dr. Cheatham said, “but that well-being in general is not just a task or the responsibility of one group.”
The medical group has built a network of Support Champions—wellness champions, peer supporters, mentors, and communication coaches—embedded in local teams across all departments.
“Support comes from a colleague down the hall rather than an office people have to seek out,” Dr. Cheatham said. “Each year we bring them together at a Support Champion Summit to recognize the work and connect the roles they refer colleagues to one another. The same philosophy shapes onboarding, where every new physician is paired with a mentor for 12 months, and that extends to leadership transitions.”
Well-being must be “part of everything that we do. It’s part of our culture,” she added. “Everything that we do, we look through the lens of physician well-being, and once it becomes part of our natural lens, then we know it’s working.”
“When we get our physicians there and when we get our leaders there, then it’s embedded and ingrained in us,” she emphasized.
Moments with leadership to show gratitude
With the help of the two feedback committees, one main focus area will be leadership development at Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group.
“It’s not natural for everyone to express appreciation,” Dr. Cheatham said. “But I’m on a mission to show people how leaders can show gratitude.”
“We’ve coined the term ‘MAPMG Moments’ and we’re going to teach leaders how to have a MAPMG Moment about acknowledging someone for whatever they’ve done,” she explained.
It’s also about “having a whole team that helps leaders lead in a way that’s different than the way they’ve led before,” Dr. Cheatham said. This is important “to support and create that sense of belonging and community that sometimes teams really need.”
“As we delve more into physician leadership development, that creates a culture that I am striving for,” Dr. Cheatham said. “If you do right by our patients, you do right by our physicians, nine times out of 10 you have done all the right things.”
Continue to listen to physicians
Throughout all of this well-being work at Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, Dr. Cheatham emphasizes the most important thing is to first just listen.
“We say we want to listen, but you actually have to listen and want to hear what physicians and clinicians say, whether it hurts or not,” she said. For example, “I used to moderate a lot of our town halls. In the Q and A session, I will always read the question in the way that the question is written, not filtering it because people need to hear how people are feeling.”
“You have to have an open mind to listen and then focus on the system issues, not just individual resilience,” Dr. Cheatham said. That’s because “resilience matters, but physicians should not be expected to carry the burden of our broken workflows or our unnecessary administrative complexities.”
“If an administration or another hospital system wants to think about looking at physician well-being, they have to be willing to listen,” she said. “They have to be willing to address those pebbles in the shoes and remove the friction points that physicians and patients experience to create a culture that builds trust in leadership.”
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