The health care workforce shortage, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is one of the biggest issues facing the industry in 2022. Clinicians across the industry are struggling with high rates of burnout and pandemic fatigue. UnitedHealth Group's Mary Jo Jerde discusses the impact of clinician burnout and how the Center for Clinician Advancement is working to build a sustainable health care workforce.
Clinician burnout has long been a concern for health care workers, but the pandemic has shed new light on the issue and related workforce concerns. The Center for Clinician Advancement at UnitedHealth Group focuses on improving clinician engagement and retention, including ways to address burnout. In this episode, UHG's Mary Jo Jerde, explains:
Evan Sweeney
Hello, and welcome to UnitedHealth Groups Weekly Dose podcast, where we'll get you up to speed on the latest trends shaping the future of health care.
One of the biggest issues facing health care in 2022 is not COVID-19, it's the workforce shortage. Virtually every type of clinician from pharmacists to physicians are heading into year three of the pandemic grappling with high rates of burnout, with roughly one in five frontline health care workers indicating they have considered leaving the industry, according to a recent Axios/Morning Consult poll.
It will take a lot to address these issues. UnitedHealth Group's Center for Clinician Advancement is one organization that's focused on building a sustainable workforce. For nearly 13 years, the center has grown from serving 7,000 nurses to more than 140,000 health care workforce professionals across the globe.
Here to discuss the future of the health care workforce is Mary Jo Gertie, who leads the Center for Clinician Advancement at UnitedHealth Group. She's also a nurse by training, and she holds a master's degree in business administration.
Mary Jo, welcome to the podcast.
Mary Jo Jerde
Thank you. It's great to be here today.
Evan Sweeney
Well, great to have you. To start, can you just sort of give me a brief overview of the Center for Clinician Advancement? What does it do and who does it serve?
Mary Jo Jerde
Absolutely. Well, the Center for Clinician Advancement focuses on improving the clinician engagement, the retention, and importantly, the development of our companies, health care professionals. And we have five I what I call strategic priorities that we are focused on as a team. One is obviously that learning and development where we're going to collaborate across the enterprise to promote and support the learning and the opportunities for development for our clinicians. And along those lines, we have several mentoring programs for our clinicians. Another strategy is focused on enhancing the health care workforce, the future, and a lot of work goes into this next generation of clinicians and the talent that we have and the leadership that we desperately need. And importantly, is a strategy that we focus on is clinician burnout and improving the clinician experience that they have and bringing joy back into the practice. We are really much focused on the licensed clinicians in our organization, would you believe we have over 350 different types of roles across our enterprise, you know, the nurses, nurse practitioners, case managers, medical directors, physicians, social workers, behavioral health, you know, pharmacists, each of these contribute greatly to our organization. And the roles are so varied. And that's the exciting part of what our Center has to offer is to bring those development opportunities to a variety of roles within our organization.
Evan Sweeney
Yeah, so, you know, I think one thing we're seeing quite a bit lately is those elevated rates of burnout among health care workers, and it's really become one of the more prominent issues heading into 2022. So, you know, clearly the pandemic has played a big role, but what are you seeing right now and what is sort of contributing to that level of burnout?
Mary Jo Jerde
Well, burnout among clinicians is not new. Yet, burnout has become more of a pressing issue in the light of the pandemic. And just to give you a historical perspective, you know, 2001, you know, way back, it was reported that, you know, 43% of nurses in the hospitals had reported exhaustion, you know, some research studies, 2011, burnout was about 33% of nurses, and these were in the hospital, and then 37%, within nursing homes. Another study in 2013, had a nationwide burnout among physicians around 40%. And it even increased to 51% in 2017. So now you lay around the pandemic, and the reports are just very, very concerning. There's actually 22 million health care workers that have been dealing with the pandemic. And those who are working closely with the patients and the families during the pandemic, are really feeling that stress in the depression and the anxiety associated with burnout more intensely than the other clinicians. So, you know, the contributing factors if I had to think about, you know, the contributing factors, and it's in all actually areas of any worker is, but specifically conditions that drives it more so is burnout, the workload, you know, when when you have a workload that matches your capacity and you know, you know, you can do a great job, you're doing well, you have the opportunity to get rest and recovery and find that growth and then opportunity for development professionally. So that's number one. You know, it's really a contributing factor. So workload that we're seeing. Another area of that contributes to burnout is the lack of control, when you feel that lack of autonomy, and you may not have a say in decisions, and you don't have access to resource that can take a toll on your well being. Another area that I think our center has been very active in is, but a contributing factor is, if you don't, there's a lack of community, if you don't have the support, and the relationships to help in your work day to day that really has its opportunity to increase your burnout and having a lack of community. And another area that's contributing to burnout is you have this conflict with your your purpose, you know, most clinicians go into health care, because it's, you know, their calling, and they really feel that they have purpose. So that motivation is lost. And it conflicts with what's happening in your day to day, it's contributing to burnout.
Evan Sweeney
Now, so what impact does that have when it you know, when it comes to patient cares, particularly when you're talking about clinicians on the frontline, who are, you know, interacting with patients every day? And what does it mean for kind of the future of the workforce, and really the sustainability of the system more broadly.
Mary Jo Jerde
So the impact of burnout on first of all patient care, and also, the health of the well being, is something that we have to take a close eye on, because we've seen that there's been an impact on productivity, attrition, the quality of the outcomes for the patient. And actually the cost. There's numbers that came from Forbes just recently, in 2019, that burnout costs between 125 billion to $190 billion every year in health care cost. And that's an area that it's going to have a lasting effect. And we need to get control of all of those areas of those impact or productivity to attrition to you know, the outcomes and the cost.
Evan Sweeney
So you use pointed out some some pretty compelling stats, I mean, dating back even, you know, a decade ago on on burnout and this long standing issue. What are some sort of proven solutions that have come about even since then? Or even more recently?
Mary Jo Jerde
Well, definitely more recently. So proven solutions that we have seen at United. And actually just even in general, the literature tells us you bring work life balance, everyone has heard that, but really, what does it mean? But if you can bring that flexibility into the work studied, tremendous opportunity to reduce the burnout, resources, supporting self care, and the mental health, I mean, we have seen suicide rates increase the depression, anxiety. So those resources if and now we found with, you know, technology, the virtual aspect of, you know, your telehealth mental health visit on via telehealth, so resources, we have to go deep on that. So important is another solution is effective leadership, when the leadership is listening to their direct reports and understanding the team dynamics that are occurring, effective leadership will be an amazing opportunity to change that needle. Sometimes incentives are an opportunity to help, especially when we're looking at the attrition issue. And it definitely, because we're having this conversation today, yeah, I would say that's the solution. We need to have the conversation and not be shying away from the topic of what's happening with the burnout in our nation and across the globe.
Evan Sweeney
Yeah, I mean, I'm curious, I think, you know, certainly we've seen a ton of attention on this issue recently, and particularly in the last two years, potentially, you know, more so than previously. Do you think that that helps bring more awareness to some of these resources? I mean, you mentioned mental health resources. And while I'm sure those were available previously, I mean, certainly this sort of highlights the importance of those.
Mary Jo Jerde
Yeah. Yes, I would say absolutely. It brings the importance of understanding we we have to do more at the center, you know, for clinician advancement. We've been actually two years ahead of the pandemic, focusing on we didn't call it burnout, we called it joint practice. And we were shaping a strategy in a pilot mode back in 2019. With Optum and UnitedHealthcare and it wasn't in 2020, we just kind of put the gas on it we really expanded across the organization with what we call this kind of co creation approach where Are our premise is really founded on the belief that if we can focus on developing joy and that fulfillment and well being, as opposed to the absence of it, it really frames up that conversation differently. And it puts you in a position of strength, instead of addressing the weakness. So two years, we've learned a lot, we've been able to develop some solutions and some offerings with our initiative. And because it's we found very clearly because when we did this co creation with the businesses, the clinicians told us, we needed individualized path for their professional fulfillment and where they're feeling the joy. And so that's where some of our initiatives came forward.
Evan Sweeney
What so what have you learned in those two years since launching that and sort of rolling that out more broadly?
Mary Jo Jerde
Well, what we've learned is our programs need to be flexible, they need to be offering solutions at the individual level. But we started one of the first learnings we found is back to that leadership concept, a concept I mentioned is we develop these Joy collaboratives, that we brought the business leaders together, and they come once a month, and they share their learnings among their teams. And they focus on identifying the root cause of burnout, and with the sharing of reps practices, you're really going to find the opportunity to get at the business level. And then what we developed was this interactive Joy roadmap. And it's a quick tool, because clinicians are so busy, they don't have time to go through a 30 page document or, you know, navigate this, they asked us to say give me a very quick assessment. So it's a self assessment. It's kind of like a ladder. So if you visually think of something, I've really burnt out a noun this bottom level, or I need to get to renewal, or I really want to get to joy. Well, how can I work on this particular moment, I feel isolated today. And so on this ladder are various, you know, word choices, and the individual can do a self assessment of kind of where they feel they are on that joy for that day. And then they have the opportunity to check in with themselves. Look at the resources, access, some of them, all of them. And then an important part is they need to reflect they need to understand that, you know, how now, what will I do with this opportunity that has been amazingly a resource that has been so well received, we've even had the opportunity to offer it outside of clinicians, because the this web based tool is just been a wonderful opportunity to help in their joy journey.
Evan Sweeney
So again, we've talked about I mean, a long standing issue with with burnout among health care workforce. And so many years to sort of address this, but what do you sort of most optimistic about regarding not just burnout, but the future of the clinician workforce.
Mary Jo Jerde
What I'm optimistic about is the innovation that has skyrocketed, and the environment is expected that we are innovating. You know, I've been in nursing many years, decades and decades. But, you know, I would have not thought I've been an innovator that what I see is the current because of COVID. Everyone is contributing to solutions, and wanting to make an impact and bring their value forward. And so it's just not for researchers anymore. Everyone contributes to innovation. So I'm so optimistic on that. I'm also when I think about the dedicated leaders who are focusing on bringing this distinctive workforce forward, and transforming. I mean, amazing things are gonna happen. And I see the commitment from our organization and our leaders to mitigate burnout. Everyone is coming together in coalition's in collaboration. And that's, I think, just so, so excited. So, you know, it's also when I step back, I think about this ripple effect of innovation, the ripple effect of people wanting to contribute and to solve these issues that we have. So when you see this ripple effect, you know, it's many times people think of it's just a stone got tossed into water, but we know it is just not that a drop in the water, it really spreads from the center and a built into something larger. And that ripple effect is really this where we're all connected. And I think that's where I know that there's going to be positive results. And every day, our clinicians are helping strengthen the health system by solving those problems by improving processes, and devising new ways to deliver care. And that's the ripple effect of clinicians is amazing.
Evan Sweeney
Well, Mary Jo Jerde, thank you for joining the podcast and thanks for this discussion.
Mary Jo Jerde
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Evan Sweeney
That's it for this week's episode of UnitedHealth Group's Weekly Dose podcast don't forget to subscribe on Apple and Spotify thanks for listening and have a great rest of your week