8 ways to pull your practice leaders back from burnout

Sixty-two percent of practice leaders said yes when MGMA asked in an Oct. 13 Stat poll whether they feel burned out in their role. Another 22 percent said somewhat. Only 16 percent said no.

The yes share was 45 percent when MGMA asked the same question in June 2018, a 17-point climb. Among the 418 leaders who responded, about 6 in 10 of those who said yes blamed workload, about 3 in 10 pointed to staffing gaps or turnover and nearly 1 in 5 named payer friction such as denials, downcoding and prior authorization. One respondent noted that conference sessions on provider burnout are everywhere, while administrator burnout rarely gets a mention.

For physician owners, the risk is concrete. The administrator is often the one role in the practice nobody backs up, and when that person leaves, payroll, payer contracts, compliance and hiring can stall at the same time. The fixes below cover both sides of the desk: what leaders can change in their own work and what owners can change around them. Here are eight places to start.