The American Medical Association (AMA) has established itself as a collaborator and leader in research, advocating, and addressing issues that lead to physician dissatisfaction and burnout. In 2019, they launched the Practice Transformation Initiative to address the large gap in the research on actionable solutions to address burnout.
As past of this initiative, healthcare organizations implement evidence-based intervention to improve physician well being using the results of the AMA’s Mini-Z survey. The Mini-Z measures physician wellbeing on a zero to fifty scale. Spectrum’s physicians and advanced providers took the survey earlier this year. The results used to identify stressors on providers from a system level — focusing on practice efficiency and workplace culture. It shows how physicians feel in three specific areas of their practice: whether they have a joyful workplace, a supportive work environment, and an acceptable work pace with low electronic medical record stress. 141 physicians and advanced providers representing all of our divisions have completed the Mini-Z survey.
Our Results
We are happy to report that overall, results on the survey placed our providers at or better than national benchmarks on each measure. The company’s scores with the greatest opportunity to improve were in the areas of work atmosphere and workload control. Each division has areas of focusing suggested by their own sub-scores.
Next Steps
Armed with these results each divisions has taken the next step to develop and implement a program addressing one or two of their key stressors. After implementation, providers will patriciate in another Mini-Z survey to determine if the changes they made have increased their satisfaction with their practice.
Our Physician Resilience & Well-being Committee
Our physician resilience and well-being committee has partnered with the Maine Medical Association to lead this project at Spectrum. We would like to give a special thank you to the physician representatives on the committee:
-Christopher Abruzzese, DO
-Matthew Cheney, MD, PhD
-Corey Couto, MD
-Charles Grimes, MD, FACR
-Andrew Mancall, MD (chair)
-Emily Meserve, MD
-Lucien Ouellette, MD
As this project progresses, we will continue to share updates and findings.