August 14, 2020 – Health care has a stress and burnout problem. Physicians have the highest suicide rate of any profession, losing up to four hundred of their colleagues a year. In an industry with a large shortage of health care professionals, the effect is catastrophic.
The issue of burnout has been around long before the pandemic and has been estimated to cost roughly $4.6 billion each year, but telehealth may help alleviate the problem. Providence Health, a Washington-based health system, rolled out its Behavioral Health Concierge program in January 2020, which provides timely telehealth support to health care providers.
“We wanted to build something dedicated to caregivers,” says Josh Cutler. “Before and especially during (COVID-19), we have been at the center of an epidemic of burnout and suicide in healthcare. We needed to give (providers) something that would address that on their terms.”
