Clinician Well-Being Assessment and Interventions in Joint Commission-Accredited Hospitals and Federally Qualified...

Clinician burnout is a longstanding national problem threatening clinician health, patient outcomes, and the health care system. The aim of this study is to determine the proportion of hospitals and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that are measuring and taking system actions to promote clinician well-being.

This cross-sectional study used an electronic questionnaire from April 21 to June 27, 2022, to assess the current state of organizational efforts to assess and address clinician well-being among a national sample of 1,982 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals and 256 accredited FQHCs. Outcomes of interest included the proportion of hospitals and FQHCs that assessed the prevalence of clinician burnout, established a chief wellness officer position, established a wellness committee, made clinician well-being an organizational performance metric, and implemented other activities/interventions that target clinician burnout.

A total of 481 (21.5%) organizations responded to the survey (hospital n = 396 [20.0%], FQHC n = 85 [33.2%]). Response rates did not differ by organization size, type, teaching status or urban vs. rural location. Approximately one third (34.0%) of the organizations in the sample conducted an organizational well-being assessment among clinicians at least once in the past three years. Although nearly half of responding organizations reported implementing some kind of intervention to address clinician burnout, only 28.7% of organizations had adopted a comprehensive approach to address clinician well-being/burnout. Only 10.1% of hospitals and 5.4% of FQHCs reported having an established senior leadership position responsible for assessing and promoting clinician well-being at the organization level, and less than half (29.3% FQHCs, 37.6% hospitals) of organizations reported having an established wellness committee. Among 500+ bed hospitals, 61.2% had surveyed, 75.6% had established a well-being committee, 78.0% had implemented interventions to promote clinician well-being, and 26.8% had established a chief wellness officer.

Although half of Joint Commission-accredited hospitals and FQHCs reported taking steps to improve clinician well-being, a minority are measuring clinician well-being, and few are taking a comprehensive approach or established a chief wellness officer position to advance clinician well-being as an organizational priority. Organizational clinician well-being improvement efforts are unlikely to be successful without measurement and leadership in place to drive change.