Improving Physician Engagement and Satisfaction — and Why It Matters
// By John Gonda //
Investing in a physician engagement program may achieve better ROI than traditional consumer-facing mass media marketing efforts.
Physician burnout is on the rise. Across the country, the ability of doctors to practice medicine and care for patients is increasingly affected by ongoing regulations and administrative requirements. As physician burnout increases, patient care and volumes are negatively impacted, which has the potential to affect revenue, reputation, and experience.
Physician engagement strategies are vital to turning this trend around. Physician engagement is recognized as a key measurement of the commitment and professional satisfaction of the medical staff. A well-conceived strategy serves to:
- Mitigate the levels of burnout and dissatisfaction within an organization
- Increase the emotional connection between a health system or medical group and its providers
- Create trusted relationships between physicians and their administrative and physician leadership
These positive relationships have been proven industry-wide to increase physician referrals and productivity. A highly engaged physician equates to quality patient care, lower costs, increased efficiency, and improved patient safety. Perhaps as important, physician engagement strategies have been shown to deliver higher levels of physician satisfaction, positively impacting employment recruitment and retention rates.
A 2014 Gallup survey reported an estimated 26 percent increase in productivity for engaged physicians over disengaged physicians. For health systems and medical groups that typically operate on extremely tight operational margins, this is an area too important to be ignored.