Healthcare leaders in North Carolina have made a new commitment to improve the mental health of clinicians.
Following last month’s launch of the ALL IN: Caring for NC Caregivers initiative between The North Carolina Clinician and Physician Retention and Well-being Consortium (NCCPRW) and The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, NCMS CEO Chip Baggett, JD & The Foundations CMO Stefanie Simmons, MD, FACEP joined Ron Southwick, senior editor of Chief Healthcare Executive for a conversation around the ALL IN initiative, the impact of the Consortium, the Foundation’s efforts on a national level, and removing administrative burdens.
Find the full article and video here.
Text taken from the article:
Baggett and Simmons spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive in a joint conversation, and Simmons had a realization as Baggett recited some of the administrative burdens on clinicians.
“The thing that stands out to me the most is none of those were actual patient care issues,” Simmons says. “These are all of the things that get in between healthcare workers and their relationship and their ability to care for patients.”
“Some of those administrative burdens are inescapable, but some of them are changeable,” she says. “And some of them can be addressed by organizations and others can be addressed at the state level. And so where we can get those barriers out of the way of a healthcare worker and their patient, having that connection and that healing relationship, it has a huge impact on burnout and also ability to have effective, efficient patient care.”
The BURDEN is that employed/contracted physicians cannot advocate to corporate on behalf of their patients or themselves without being targeted for elimination – by fairly ruthless means – including turning “help” against the physician.
If, post-pandemic, you are going to assert that “administrative issues” affect our mental health, I would strongly suggest that the NCMS, and NCPS, and NCMB and everyone else purporting to “care” about physicians begin lobbying the legislature to reform physician “labor law” (in our “at-will” state) and provide medical whistleblower protection to MDs. “Without cause” termination. Mandatory arbitration. Non-competes. Intrusive/lengthy credentialing. Bad-faith HR and/or peer review. Medicine is thirty years plus behind what is actually going-on on our ground – all to the benefit of “corporate” and private equity.