Supporting physician well-being across a large, complex health system can’t rely on isolated programs or one-off initiatives. For Sutter Health, it required shared commitment and years of work to better understand what physicians were experiencing across the organization. Now the organization is building a more coordinated approach.
Sutter Health is aligning more than 28 acute care facilities and eight medical groups around a shared strategy for physician well-being, work that was recognized with Bronze-level recognition from the AMA’s Joy in Medicine® Health System Recognition Program.
“To provide our patients and communities the best possible care, we need to begin by caring for our people,” said Jill Kacher Cobb, MD, an anesthesiologist and chief wellness officer for Sutter Health.
For Sutter Health, applying for Joy in Medicine recognition as one health system reinforced that commitment, and signaled that this work was bigger than any one hospital, medical group or market. It was a commitment to treating physician well-being as a shared system priority.
That systemwide approach also required strategy, structure and partnership. By bringing teams together across the organization, Sutter Health was able to align its efforts, identify common goals and create a stronger foundation for change.
“Aligning our approach to physician well‑being was already a priority for Sutter Health. Under our new Office of Well-being, we looked at well-being holistically across our system and thought about how to create more consistency and alignment across our programs—from our hospital-based programs to our medical groups,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “Peer support is one example. We currently have a system program as well as several medical group- and hospital-based programs for physicians and advanced practice clinicians.”
“We see an opportunity to better align these efforts, particularly around consistent training and expanded physician specialty–matched support,” she said. “This is a natural next step as we think about alignment across the system.”
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.
Two years after earning Bronze-level recognition as a whole system, Sutter Health’s experience offers a look at what it takes to pursue well-being work at scale, and why health systems are stronger when they move forward together.
Communicating about recognition
Once Sutter Health heard the news that they received Bronze-level recognition as a whole system, that’s when communication started.
“We communicated through multiple internal channels for physicians, employees and leaders, including at virtual town hall and in-person meetings,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said.
For example, at a management team meeting, the Joy in Medicine trophy was on one of the slides and the audience was about 4,000 people across Sutter Health.
Working with the AMA
“The AMA has been an incredibly supportive partner, and our team has used office hours multiple times. They helped clarify any questions that we had while putting together the application,” said Dr. Kacher Cobb. “For example, one of our questions was, could ambient AI be used as a team member in regard to offloading EHR burden?”
The answer was “yes,” because it's not being done by the physician or a nonphysician provider, which was great news to Dr. Kacher Cobb and her team.
“What was really great was that being part of the AMA Health System Member Program, we were eligible for an optional pre-review of our application with the Joy in Medicine team,” she explained. “At the beginning of the new year, we had a great meeting with the team. They went over our draft application and gave us some good guidance.”
The AMA Joy in Medicine team offered optional pre-reviews of draft applications as a benefit to organizations that are part of the AMA Health System Member Program ahead of the 2026 application cycle. AMA Health System Member Program status and draft application pre-reviews have no bearing on review committee decisions and whether an organization earns recognition.
“The AMA has been our cheerleader along the way, and they truly want us to be successful,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “We know that this work is incredibly important to the AMA. This work is also incredibly important to Sutter Health—it’s part of our mission.”
Following the Joy in Medicine road map
“While reviewing the Bronze-level application, we recognized that we needed to accelerate making the Sutter Health employee assistance program available for all clinicians across the organization and approve a systemwide policy,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “We also had just launched our interdisciplinary well-being committee where select leaders from across the organization meet and learn about well-being work across the health system. This was also added to the Bronze application.”
Additionally, Sutter Health’s “peer support program had just launched and fit for this recognition level too,” she said.
The process of applying for Bronze-level recognition also helped the system analyze what has been done so far and what other gaps they need to fill to get to the next level.
“It really helped to know that we were on the right track developing a comprehensive systemwide well-being program,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “It was like starting to crawl and then stand and then walk and then run. We realized that we had the scaffolding and infrastructure in place to build an even better systemwide program.”
What’s next? Sutter Health is thinking big about their next steps after receiving Bronze-level recognition. Hint: It’s more than applying for Silver.
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.
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.
