Texas Children’s Pediatrics is taking a new step in its effort to better understand and support physician well-being, shifting to the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy® to deliver deeper, data-driven insights into the factors shaping the work environment.
The move reflects a growing recognition across health systems that measuring well-being is not just about tracking burnout rates, but about identifying the operational and cultural drivers behind them. By using the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy assessment tool and set of services, Texas Children’s Pediatrics aims to gain a more comprehensive view of what is helping—and hindering—physicians in their daily practice.
Texas Children's Pediatrics 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.
“We’ve tried to be thoughtful,” said Dan Gollins, president of Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Urgent Care. “We were on a different product for the last few years, but we’ve recognized the value that it could bring being integrated and having some of those knowledgeable assets to look at the data and benchmark against others across the country.”
“That is one of the benefits that we’re looking forward to this year, which will be our first year using the AMA’s Organizational Biopsy,” Gollins said.
Texas Children’s Pediatrics is aiming to launch the new survey by May, starting with their pediatricians. The transition will allow the health system to benchmark results against national data, prioritize targeted interventions and better align improvement efforts with physicians’ real-world experiences.
As more health systems look for meaningful ways to improve the practice environment, Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ decision underscores a broader shift toward structured, evidence-based strategies to advance physician well-being and strengthen patient care.
Using a survey that asks the right questions
The AMA’s Organizational Biopsy is more than just a survey—it helps health systems ask the right questions by focusing on the day-to-day factors that shape physicians’ work, such as workload, teamwork and efficiency. By pinpointing what matters most, it will guide Texas Children’s Pediatrics to focus on the areas where changes can have the greatest impact on well-being and patient care.
“The switch to the AMA Organizational Biopsy offers us a chance to expand on our partnership with the AMA Health System Member Program team and gain insight into where our physicians and advanced practice providers compare to national data,” said Sapna Singh, MD, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at Texas Children’s Pediatrics. “It also will give us the opportunity to continue to work on system changes that follow the Joy in Medicine road map, which we have used in the past to help us strategize actions and initiatives for our team.”
“Having information that can help share and tell the story, that’s not just our own, is important,” Gollins said, noting Texas Children’s Pediatrics has over 400 pediatricians and 100 nonphysician providers, which can make it hard to identify focus areas.
“It’s also nice to know what is happening across the country for either all clinicians or all other pediatricians so that we can at least have some sense of if we’re headed in the right direction or having the right conversations and where we are truly missing the mark,” he added.
Building trust that the survey will lead to action
While surveying is important to identify pain points and gaps, it cannot be accomplished without building trust with physicians.
“We had to build trust in the fact that the survey and the assessment process was going to lead to action,” said Dr. Singh. “That fundamentally is where many people will tell you, ‘Well, I’ve answered these questions before, but I don’t feel like any good came of it.’”
“What we were really thoughtful about was when we performed the assessment initially, we shared the results with the entire organization and that included even the stuff that was really hard to see—the comments, the raw data,” Dr. Singh said. “It was all anonymous, so there was no way to identify anybody, but it was important for people to see what the true feelings were. Then we took those results and we acted upon them very specifically.”
“Key drivers for physicians were concerns around in-basket workload, documentation burden, access to mental health resources for patients, engagement with leadership, and staffing support,” said Dr. Singh.
The top five pain points—which included concerns around in-basket workload, documentation burden, access to mental health resources for patients, engagement with leadership and staffing support—that kept popping up as a theme led to the creation of action items that Texas Children’s Pediatrics prioritized to address and fix.
“We have implemented Dragon Copilot AI scribes to help with documentation and augmented response technology [ART] to help with in-basket message burden. Our system also invested in integrating behavioral health specialists in our clinics along with providing our physicians with REACH training which expanded their abilities to treat mental health issues without external resources.”
“Once you’re able to show people that we took the survey seriously and that your effort and your time to answer the questions actually led to some kind of change that you can see and feel, it helped to get the buy-in for the next survey,” she explained.
Keeping it consistent each year
Measuring physician well-being on a consistent, year-to-year basis helps health systems move beyond one-time snapshots to a clearer understanding of trends over time. Regular assessment creates a steady framework, ensuring efforts are focused, comparable and aligned rather than sporadic or reactive.
“We’ve also been thoughtful about trying to do it on an annual basis,” said Dr. Singh. “Our larger system also has engaged in a survey, but thanks to Dan’s efforts, he has really pushed for the physicians and APPs to be carved out to only be conducting one survey that meaningfully is able to assess well-being during the year.”
“That way we’re not doing it every three months having another one and another one,” she said. “It’s really there to help gather information at one time and then we can strategically plan around that.”
Showing physicians their voices are heard
Strong participation is key to ensuring the data reflects the full physician experience, not just a small or vocal subset. Broad engagement also helps to create a more accurate picture, so leaders can make informed decisions that support the entire care team.
“What has been very important is people are seeing results, so then they feel like their voice actually does matter and that allows them to complete these surveys,” said Dr. Singh. “Initially, we saw half of our team respond to the survey, and that number continues to grow. We actually had a systemwide survey that went out and there was a 98% participation rate.”
“There’s been some really significant buy-in and having that data is important because you don’t just want to have a carve out of a group,” she said. “You really want a large amount of people answering those questions.”
“You can’t just listen and not take action,” said Gollins, noting “the first survey or two that we’ve done following up with those actions and actually showing results drives people to want to give their voice.”
““We want our team to feel empowered to speak up about what they want to see changed,” he said. “We want them to know that their voices will be heard, and action will be considered and made thanks to their input”
“We’ve demonstrated that action has been taken based on the feedback that we’ve been given. You want action, you have to give feedback, and you have to participate,” Gollins said.
Establishing physician advocates
“We’ve got great physician advocates,” said Gollins. Our engagement and well-being committee is a very diverse group of clinicians all across our state and they are also key advocates for us when they are out there talking about this, amplifying the physician voice and why it’s important.”
“It’s not me or Dr. Singh or the operations team telling physicians to complete the survey,” he said. “We have a team of physicians and clinicians who are actually out there having those conversations on why it’s important and getting their peers to do this at a much more local level.”
Expanding the journey
“One of the other exciting things is we are part of a larger physician organization that has all of our subspecialists,” Gollins said, noting that Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ “primary care side or urgent care side of the house has really run with this.”
“Our hospital and our specialists are catching up, so we are in active conversations that they will likely come with us on this journey to survey an entire physician organization and not just with our primary care side,” he said.
“It’s new and different, but we are slowly bringing the organization along,” Gollins said. “We're setting up a well-being council, and our hospital has hired a new system quality officer, but we've got a lot of work that has to be done before we can even launch on the hospital side.”
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.
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