Physician Burnout Calls for Legal Intervention

Physician burnout is receiving more attention in the medical literature, and deservedly so. For example, in October of 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a lengthy report called Taking Action against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being. The report is comprehensive and well worth reading, and it offers a series of sound recommendations for addressing the burnout problem. However, the recommendations are quite ambitious, and implementing them would require a considerable investment of time, staffing, and financial resources. The medical community should not be left to grapple with the phenomenon of physician burnout alone. The law has a significant role to play in addressing the problem. As a first step, it is useful to consider a few concrete interventions that regulators could realistically implement in the short term.