How to get your “Return on Investment” 

ROI is a financial term, “Return on Investment.” Fortunately or unfortunately, medicine has become a business, and as a physician or physicians we exist within that system within that business. There are definitely those around us who like to maximize our productivity. If you work for yourself you would like to do that for yourself. If you work for others, they want to maximize your productivity. As far as wellness goes or burnout, I think the question always is, “What if we invest X, Y or Z — time, money, resources, programs, consultants, those types of things?”

What will our Return on Investment be?

 If you look at physician wellness and burnout from a financial standpoint, we know that replacing visitors typically takes about five to 10 times their annual salary. You might say, “that’s crazy, that can’t possibly true.” But if you start talking about all the lost productivity, the costs with hiring a new person, the amount of time it takes to ramp them back up to where the previous physician was training, issues licensure, removing all of those things, it is fairly easily five to 10 times the salary. 

  So you’re talking maybe 2 million to $5 million or more for replacing a physician who becomes burned out. Separate from that if you start talking about the returns on a scribe to help you with your electronic medical record or physician wellness program, having time off, having call coverage or night coverage or night floats, etc.

You always have to look at–

What is the expenditure?

  And then, what is the return?

  And because many things in medicine now can fortunately unfortunately be quantitated, we can look at productivity. One of the easiest trade offs that I always feel like is having a scribe or having someone help wrangle your EMR so you can be free to do the mental work  and the physician job part of your job. Let someone else handle the clerical, the note taking, and record keeping aspects of the job, not that those aren’t important, but those can definitely be handed off to someone as long as they’re overseen by you.

For Example: 

  A scribe may be a 20 or $30,000, per year expense. And if you do the math at works up to maybe one patient per day (from a productivity standpoint) to cover that scribe. And what I always like to look at is what are the back end benefits of having that scribe?  You may get home an hour or two earlier every day, or  you may have to eliminate your pajama time. You may be allowed start to get into more of the intangible benefits to yourself, your life, and your family. Better fitness, more time for fitness, better nutrition, better time and more time with your family, your spouse, or kids. Regaining and claiming back some of that life that you had.  Strictly from a financial standpoint, it’s an absolute no brainer, it’s a WIN-WIN! 

  So, the return on investment for physician wellness is I think five or 10x, at least, and from a life and happiness standpoint it’s nearly infinite! 

I hope that’s helpful! As always, remember– Burnout Recovery is for YOU!

~Jeff Moody, MD

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