Physician well-being is a critical but often misunderstood metric for hospitals and health systems. To improve well-being, healthcare organizations need an evidence-based roadmap and need the right survey tools to measure burnout. This was a key theme at an executive roundtable sponsored by the American Medical Association at Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting. This roundtable was moderated by James Gilligan, vice president for health system and group partnerships at the AMA.

The session featured:

• Jill Kacher Cobb, MD, chief wellness officer, Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.)

• Heather Farley, MD, vice president, professional satisfaction, AMA

• Nigel Girgrah, MD, PhD, chief wellness officer, Ochsner Health (Jefferson, La.)

• Mark Talamini, MD, senior vice president and executive director, Northwell Health Physician Partners (New Hyde Park, N.Y.)

Here were three key insights from the session:

1. Misconceptions about measuring physician well-being abound

One misconception is that relying on engagement surveys is sufficient. However, engagement surveys are not a reliable method of assessing well-being because a physician may be highly engaged and highly burned out at the same time.

“We need to go beyond simple engagement surveys and beyond measuring individual physician resilience,” Dr. Farley said. That’s because the main driver of physician well-being is the environment in which physicians work — not how well they personally cope with it.

“Well-being is a quality indicator, if not the quality indicator. It drives patient experience, discretionary effort and quality and safety outcomes — and well-being reduces turnover,” Dr. Girgrah said. For these reasons, one of his priorities is to communicate the importance of measuring and improving physician wellness to Ochsner Health’s board. With that information, he said, “The board needs to direct resources and focus on well-being.”

2. Tools that assess the clinical practice environment are a more holistic approach to measuring well-being

The AMA’s Organizational Biopsy® tool — designed and validated by physicians — assesses several work-related dimensions, including physicians’ perceptions of the EHR burden, practice efficiency, operational reliability, teamwork and leadership support.

To date, over 130 healthcare organizations have deployed Organizational Biopsy. Data from 19,000 physicians at these organizations, surveyed for AMA’s National Burnout Comparison Report, show that burnout rates have decreased from 48% to 42% over three years. A decrease has also been observed in physicians’ intent to leave their organization within the next two years.

3. AMA’s assessment tool has raised awareness of the need to reform internal surveys

“In our 2023 survey, our physicians felt the survey was too long, not tailored to the physician experience, and weren’t sure if their responses were being incorporated in actionable ways across the enterprise.” Dr. Talamini said.

Building on this crucial feedback, Northwell’s 2025 survey has been significantly streamlined and now incorporates well-being questions from Organizational Biopsy. This revised approach has yielded a remarkable 77% response rate, a notable increase from the previous 54%. This level of participation represents input from over 4,000 employed physicians across the enterprise. Significantly, burnout rate has shown a substantial decrease, falling from 44% in 2023 to 29% in 2025.

Northwell’s current focus is ensuring that this valuable data is effectively communicated and that our frontline physicians can tangibly perceive their feedback being translated into actionable initiatives.

Similarly, Sutter Health, after recognizing widespread survey fatigue, integrated well-being questions from the organizational biopsy survey into their annual experience of work survey. This gave them a higher survey response rate resulting in better data and reduced survey fatigue. “Since 2022 we’ve seen a statistically significant decrease in burnout,” Dr. Kacher Cobb said. “Our medical staff burnout has decreased by 26% and burnout for our medical groups has declined by 42%.” The health system is actively implementing ambient AI technology, which has impacted workplace well-being.

To learn more about The AMA’s Organizational Biopsy® tool, or to download the 2025 National Physician Comparison Report, visit ama-assn.org/joy.

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