Turning burnout into growth strategies for healthcare providers

Workload management

The survey found that 49% of respondents felt that their organizations were inadequately staffed to meet business needs. This is leading to longer hours for an overburdened workforce and increased strain on providers.

With healthcare facing a projected worker shortage of 100,000 by 2028, the need to optimize productivity and efficiency and retain workers is critical. Margaret Belden, Grant Thornton Director, Business Consulting, urges organizations to engage their workforce in solving the issues, pointing out that 50% of workers feel their voices are not heard at work.

Jen Morelli, Grant Thornton Principal, Business Consulting, ranks the organization’s culture as a major contributor to mental well-being. She suggests establishing a culture where well-being is prioritized, workers are encouraged to seek personal care, and leaders are held accountable for the overall conditions that contribute to burnout. 

Another issue adding to the burden on healthcare staff is the accelerating pace of change in today’s healthcare organizations. The significant increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in recent years has created a massive integration challenge for many healthcare organizations and workers cite organizational changes as areas of stress.

With an increase in healthcare M&A activity forecast  to continue well into the foreseeable future, it will be important for organizations to address the resulting changes in the culture of the organization — including new technologies or upgrades to current electronic medical records (EMRs), front- and back-end systems, and workflows. Deploying an operational readiness planning committee and process is an effective way to identify all the actions necessary for a successful transition and direct communications that alleviate the anxiety and stress that often comes with significant change.

Inefficiencies play a role

The working environments at today’s healthcare providers are complex. Taking steps to improve process efficiencies is one way to prevent medical errors, minimize waste, and control costs. Survey respondents expressed their concerns about the effects of inefficient workflows on their mental and emotional wellbeing, with 38% reporting that inefficient processes and systems have contributed to burnout.

Improving operational efficiency requires an understanding about which activities create value, and which can lead to wasted time. Changing workflows to eliminate unnecessary tasks can allow staff more time to provide quality care. One way we have helped clients improve teammate engagement, according to Claudia Douglass, Grant Thornton Principal and Healthcare Industry Growth Leader, is by reviewing all of the steps in workflows and instituting appropriate technologies in the middle-of-the-care journey to reduce the burden on caregivers. Investments in technologies such as AI and machine vision can also help in this care model transformation by reducing low-value activities and supporting clinical decision making.

The healthcare worker shortage has had a severe impact on the availability of formal healthcare professional career development programs. This is an issue for survey respondents. Only 48% say they believe their organizations are transparent about their career paths. Only 52% say they have visibility into their own growth and development opportunities.

While providing well-defined career paths is one of the most effective strategies for staff retention, 30% of respondents indicate that their organization is not transparent about their career path and performance. This presents opportunities to ramp up offerings with advanced training, professional development, shadowing roles and mentorship and provide greater clarity around career paths and advancement.

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Need for a redesign

A recent Grant Thornton HR leader survey uncovered that 76% of HR leaders are reviewing their existing performance management process. Performance management processes play a critical role in conveying how an organization values an employee’s contributions and its impact on pay. Our survey indicated that more than one-third of healthcare workers do not feel valued at work. According to Belden, it’s time to overhaul the process. “Performance management processes will need to be redesigned to be more frequent, more developmental in nature and less ambiguous as it pertains to the overall process, impact on their performance, compensation and advancement.”

Consider a workforce that is both overworked due to labor shortages and frustrated by their fellow employees — nearly half said their organizations are not managing poor performers appropriately. While organizations can often retain poor performers in times of staffing challenges, it sends a challenging message to those who are performing well and likely taking on the burden of the poor performers.

In addition to performance management and investment in learning and education, periodic talent reviews can signal the organization’s investment in their employees. Talent reviews are not just for the top 10% of the organization — they should be conducted for all critical roles. Doing so signals your investment in your healthcare workers and charts a clear and intentional path to retention and commitment to professional development. The outcomes support the identification of top performers, identify and train, coach or deal with poor performers, and help identify potential successors.

Other contributors to an overburdened healthcare workforce are complications caused by excessive policies and procedures, adding to an already onerous administrative burden. “It’s what we do to ourselves,” said Douglass. “Most healthcare organizations have way too many policies, too many rules, and they overburden their staff with cross-checks and alerts.”

A leading U.S. healthcare system and Grant Thornton client implemented a new solution for streamlining its policy and procedure management system. Over the course of a single year, the healthcare system’s policy oversight committee was able to retire more than 2,000 documents systemwide by eliminating duplicate documents, excess documents produced by conflicting system policies, and documents that were no longer relevant.

The policy streamlining also had more direct benefits for employees. Reducing the number of policies freed up employees to spend more time with patients which, in turn, boosted morale.

The key to making the policy reduction program a success was to honor the wisdom of the teammates closest to the patients and consumers of care. “They know where the waste is. When the administration tries to do it, or even middle-level management, they fail,” Douglass added.

Staff burnout remains an industry concern

According to the State of Work in America survey and industry trends, each of the foregoing issues and challenges is actively contributing to the deteriorating mental and emotional wellbeing and burnout of the healthcare workforce.

Healthcare provider burnout surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a peak in 2021 when approximately 62.8% of physicians reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout. Recent data indicates a decline in these rates, with 48.2% of physicians reporting burnout symptoms in 2023, down from 53% in 2022., it continues to plague the industry with 60% of healthcare workers indicating they experienced burnout in the past year, 10 percentage points higher than all other industries surveyed.

However, despite this improvement since the pandemic, current burnout levels remain higher than pre-pandemic figures. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, burnout rates among physicians were at 41.9%. Similarly, a 2022 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 46% of health workers reported feeling burned out often or very often, compared with 32% in 2018. 

These statistics suggest that while there has been some recovery, healthcare provider burnout remains a significant concern. 

Healthcare employers should take a proactive approach to addressing the mental health of their employees, reviewing and refining their policies with an eye to enhancing their ability to attract and retain a healthier and happier workforce. Programs that feature innovative and compassionate approaches to driving meaningful change can go a long way to reducing caregiver burnout and improving technology adoption.

According to Morelli, healthcare organizations should look to their leadership development efforts as one way they can improve the support they provide for the mental and emotional well-being of healthcare staff. Rather than putting more processes and policies in place, a more effective strategy is to train managers and leaders about how to recognize signs of burnout and empower them with ways in which they can more effectively support their teams with programs like resilience training. Examples of resilience training can be mindfulness training, cognitive behavioral techniques, stress management and self-care strategies to improve emotional well-being, reduce stress and enhance job satisfaction.

Overall, survey respondents conveyed positive attitudes about the technology tools available at their organizations, with 73% indicating that their current technology tools allow them to maximize their work output and overall efficiency, though only 36% reporting that they understand and use AI in their current role.

Advancing healthcare through the adoption of innovative technologies will be crucial for healthcare organizations — not only improving patient outcomes and supporting the efficacy and wellbeing of caregiver staff, but also for meeting the challenges of the future. For hospitals and health systems to be sustainable into the future, they will need to embrace innovation and invest in and explore advanced technologies with the potential to enhance operational efficiencies, improve patient outcomes, and make healthcare more accessible.