Last Wednesday, the new MHA-MMS Joint Task Force on Physician Burnout held its first meeting.
While representatives from MHA and the Mass. Medical Society have for many years sat on task forces together, the physician burnout group is perhaps the first task force that the two groups have chaired jointly.
Drs. Alain Chaoui, MMS president elect, and Steve Defossez, MHA’s VP of Clinical Integration, lead the task force.
According to various studies over the years, 54% of doctors say they are burned out, 88% report moderate to severe stress, and 59% of doctors wouldn’t recommend a career in medicine to their children. It is commonly estimated that approximately 300 to 400 M.D.s commit suicide each year.
The goal of the task force is to identify and prioritize effective strategies to combat physician burnout and advocate for statewide adoption of identified strategies and practices. The task force will ultimately present its findings to the governing boards of MHA and MMS.
MHA’s Defossez said, “I’m hopeful we can make real progress on this long-standing problem and come up with a series of meaningful steps that not only will address physician burnout in the commonwealth, but could be used as a template for change across the U.S. Alain and I also believe that while our focus is on physicians, we hope that our learnings and strategies may also be transferable to combat burnout of other types of clinicians.”