Thriving in Healthcare Providers: Relationship to Emotional Exhaustion & Impact on Primary Care Population Health Outcomes

In 2014 Bodenheimer and Sinsky published the Quadruple Aim model, which argued that healthcare provider wellbeing was the missing link to improving patient and population health outcomes, as well as cost containment. Rather than treating burnout, however, experts in fields outside healthcare are finding validity in promoting thriving at work as a means to prevent burnout and improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion (which is widely considered a core element of burnout) in healthcare providers, and the impact thriving had on primary care population health outcomes as measured by quantifiable value-based quality performance metrics. Using Georges' (2013) Emancipatory Theory of Compassion and Bodenheimer and Sinsky's Quadruple Aim as conceptual frameworks, this descriptive, non-experimental study used advanced applied biostatistical techniques to analyze archival data from the December 2018 UCHealth Physician and Advanced Practice Provider Voice Survey as well as provider performance scores from the same time period. Results of the study were mixed, showing that while there is an inverse relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion in healthcare providers, thriving did not predict population health outcomes. By evaluating thriving in healthcare providers in relation to emotional exhaustion and in context of value-based health care delivery systems, this study was the first of its kind.