Taskforce: Burnout may cost the healthcare industry $17 billion a year
Hospitals and health systems may be losing billions of dollars due to physician burnout, according to a paper released by the National Taskforce for Humanity in Healthcare (NTH). The NTH estimates that burnout-related turnover may cost health systems up to $1.7 billion annually for hospital-employed physicians and up to $17 billion across all U.S. physician.
The NTH based its estimates on data on physician turnover rates due to burnout and turnover costs. The cost of replacing a physician is estimated to be two to three times the physician’s annual salary once recruitment, onboarding, and lost patient care revenue are factored in.
The NTH suggested system-level solutions to burnout. These include reframing the dialogue from burnout prevention to creation of systems that support resilience and well-being, adopting a metric for humanity that focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of emotional thriving and resilience, and creating a plan for a systematic culture shift to a human-centered care system.