Integrated wellness services demonstrate value. The in-house counselor consistently has clinic slots booked. Providers benefit from having convenient, easy-to-schedule, confidential access to a licensed counselor who understands the complexity of practicing emergency medicine, is able to meet their fast-paced lifestyle, and relates to the personality types drawn to Emergency Medicine. There is recognition that burnout impacts healthcare quality. As such, there is an urgent need to develop innovative programs that restructure how front-line clinicians receive mental health services. Wellness solutions that are tailored to better equip and serve front-line medical providers require the mental health clinician to understand how departments operate day-to-day and require an adaptive approach that aligns with the clinician’s lifestyle and unique wellness needs. This presentation will describe a custom wellness program integrated into the quality strategy for an Emergency Medicine physician group and discuss learnings that were essential to mediate the negative impacts of provider burnout.
Problem: When front-line clinicians experience burnout, quality is negatively impacted. Burnout can negatively impact patient satisfaction, and increase healthcare costs through worsened patient outcomes and through attrition or loss of clinicians in the field. To address burnout innovative wellness programs must be part of the overall quality strategy for healthcare institutions
Measurement: Utilization characteristics were gathered for Emergency Medicine providers who self-scheduled services with a counselor who was specifically contracted to provide wellness interventions for clinicians employed by the provider group. A comparison was then made for the utilization of in-house counseling versus external services provided by the large hospital system
Analysis: The analysis included simple calculations performed in Excell to explore themes in use patterns for the in-house counseling service. A survey was also developed to gather input on the perceived value of having in-house wellness services for Emergency Medicine clinicians
Implementation: A counselor with experience in the emergency setting and knowledge of trauma care was contracted by the provider group to provide concierge-style wellness interventions for all clinicians and team members employed by the physician group. Initial obstacles included gaining trust from the clinicians and encouraging the use of wellness services
