Survey: Physician burnout remains elevated heading into planning season

Physician burnout rates have declined from their pandemic-era peak, but they remain well above pre-2020 baselines, and practice administrators who treat the problem as a wellness issue rather than an operational one are increasingly out of step with how the data frames it.

The American Medical Association (AMA)'s 2024 national physician comparison report, which drew on nearly 18,000 survey responses across 43 states, found that 43.2% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout in 2024, down from 48.2% in 2023 and a pandemic high of 62.8% in 2021.

While the trend is encouraging, the AMA cautioned against treating the decline as a signal that the underlying problem is resolving. Physicians remain at higher risk for burnout than the general working population even after controlling for hours worked, pointing to structural issues in the health care environment that shorter workweeks alone will not fix.

The specialties with the highest burnout rates in the 2024 data included emergency medicine at 52.2%, family medicine at 46.4%, and obstetrics and gynecology at 45.8%.

Primary care physicians, who are typically the backbone of independent practice, continue to show elevated rates that practice administrators should factor into succession planning, hiring timelines, and staffing models.

The financial dimension of burnout is harder to ignore than it once was. The AMA has estimated that burnout costs the U.S. health care system $4.6 billion a year, largely through physician turnover and reduced clinical hours. For an individual practice, the cost of replacing a departing physician, including recruiting, credentialing, and the productivity ramp for a new hire, routinely runs into six figures. Practices that treat retention as a financial priority rather than a culture initiative are better positioned to absorb those costs before they hit.

Among the interventions showing the most consistent results are those that reduce administrative load rather than adding wellness programming on top of it. Practices that have audited their electronic health record (EHR) workflows, delegated inbox triage to trained medical assistants, or worked with payers to streamline prior authorization requirements report measurable improvements in physician satisfaction without significant capital investment.

The key finding in multiple studies is that physicians are less burned out when they feel in control of their time and when non-clinical work is handled by non-clinical staff.

Documentation burden is a recurring flashpoint. Physicians in the AMA's data consistently cite time spent on the EHR after hours, sometimes referred to as pajama time, as among the most corrosive contributors to dissatisfaction. Practices that have implemented pre-visit planning protocols, structured note templates, or medical scribe programs report that the reduction in after-hours documentation time has a measurable impact on physician morale and retention.

The AMA's STEPS Forward program offers free, CME-eligible toolkits on practice transformation strategies designed specifically to reduce physician administrative load. Modules cover team-based care models, inbox management redesign, pre-visit planning, and asynchronous communication tools, most of which can be implemented without purchasing new technology. Practice administrators looking for a structured starting point can access the full library at edhub.ama-assn.org/steps-forward.

The planning season is also a useful moment to measure burnout more formally within a practice. The AMA's Organizational Biopsy assessment tool, available to practices partnering with the AMA Health System Program, provides a structured way to benchmark burnout and job satisfaction against national data and identify the specific workflow or cultural factors driving results in a given setting. Practices that have never conducted a formal physician well-being assessment often find that the results surface issues that were known anecdotally but had not been prioritized operationally.