Health systems have invested in physician well-being programs, workflow changes and team-based support to ease burnout and rebuild connection. But the next question is just as important as the work itself: How do leaders know whether those efforts are making a measurable difference?
Assessing the impact of physician well-being initiatives requires more than tracking a single burnout score or waiting for annual survey results. It means looking at the full picture—what physicians are experiencing day to day, whether operational barriers are being removed, how teams are using available resources and whether changes are reaching the people who need them most.
For health systems, that work can help separate good intentions from meaningful progress. It can also show where to adjust, where to invest more deeply, and where well-being efforts are not yet translating into a better practice environment for physicians and care teams.
“Measuring burnout is an important starting point, but it’s not sufficient. Measures of burnout, job satisfaction and intent to leave can be considered lagging indicators. They tell you that you’ve got a problem, but not necessarily what you need to do to fix it,” said Heather Farley, MD, MHCDS, group vice president of professional satisfaction and practice sustainability for the AMA.
“The most effective organizations go deeper by focusing on leading indicators—the drivers of well-being and burnout, such as work control and autonomy, efficiency of the practice environment, perception of leadership, support and teamwork,” Dr. Farley said. “These leading indicators and drivers are far more actionable, and you might want to consider assessing them more regularly through pulse surveys or regular check-ins, which can augment that typical annual survey cycle.”
“A pulse survey is a shorter survey with very targeted questions that you use to check on the progress of well-being initiatives or other factors,” she explained. “Let’s say that you implemented an intervention, and you want to check to see if that intervention was successful, you can do a pulse survey that is geared towards assessing the specific outcome measures related to that intervention.”
“It’s also critical to pair the survey data with operational metrics that reflect the day-to-day experience of work. For example, time spent in the EHR, work outside of work and utilization of peer support resources,” Dr. Farley said. “Those operational metrics help answer a different question: Are we actually changing the conditions in which our physicians practice?”
That kind of assessment requires health systems to look beyond whether a program exists and focus instead on if it is changing the conditions physicians face each day. Dr. Farley offers guidance on how leaders can evaluate physician well-being initiatives, identify what is gaining traction and adjust when efforts are not delivering meaningful change.
Look for changes in leading indicators
“It’s very easy to fall back on process metrics or measures of activity, such as: How many programs did we launch? How many people attended a session? How many resources were made available?” Dr. Farley said. “But those activity metrics don’t necessarily tell you about whether anything has actually changed in the lived experience of physicians.”
“Real progress shows up in the day-to-day experience of their work,” she emphasized.
That is why leaders need to ask: Did this actually make it easier for physicians to do their jobs and improve their experience?
“To distinguish activity from impact, leaders should look for changes in those leading indicators, such as work control, teamwork and perceptions of support,” Dr. Farley explained. “Look for changes in those operational metrics, such as the EHR time, inbox burden or other measures of workflow efficiency, and ultimately, whether physicians are experiencing less friction in their daily work and checking in with them.”
Whether physician well-being initiatives are new or have been around for a while, assessing the impact is key. Dr. Farley shares some advice for what leaders should keep in mind when measuring the success of well-being initiatives, including:
- Early signals of success.
- Mistakes to avoid when assessing impact.
- Questions to ask when results are flat or negative.
- The role of sharing stories.
- Not all metrics tell the whole story.
- How the AMA can help.
- Ways to build physician trust.
- Why continuous refinement of well-being work is important.
