Why Clinicians Stay: How to Improve Retention Beyond Compensation

What makes a talented clinician choose one healthcare organization over another—and what ultimately convinces them to stay?

Compensation remains essential, but it cannot compensate indefinitely for exhausting schedules, cumbersome documentation, limited professional growth or a workplace where frontline concerns go unanswered.

According to the American Medical Association, 41.9% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout in 2025. As this number continues to improve, workplace conditions will be a high priority for top talent, including how organizations handle administrative burdens, time pressure and organizational culture.

To better understand what healthcare leaders can do to compete for and retain clinical talent, members of the Senior Executive Healthcare Think Tank—a curated group of experts whose experience spans healthcare leadership, workforce strategy, technology, patient experience and organizational performance—offer an inside look at the evolving relationship between clinicians and the organizations they serve, and what leaders should consider as they rethink their approach to attracting, supporting and retaining the people at the heart of patient care.

Make Technology Work for Clinicians

Technology can improve care, but poorly designed systems can turn routine clinical work into a persistent source of frustration. Bisera Lakinska, Senior Marketing Professional at M42, highlights the challenge of fragmented electronic medical records (EMRs), excessive clicks and patient information that is difficult to access across facilities.

“Technology is a major factor in clinician satisfaction and retention,” Lakinska says. “Before buying new tools, including AI, spend time with clinicians to understand where their day gets lost.”

Her advice is to involve clinicians in selecting, designing and implementing integrated systems. Leaders should identify repetitive tasks, information bottlenecks and workflow interruptions before investing in another platform.

“When clinicians see that technology was created around their work, they get back time with their patients and have one less reason to leave,” she says.

Tirumala Ashish Kumar Manne, Principal Cloud Architect at Optum, similarly argues that clinician experience should be engineered rather than treated as an employee perk.

“Treat the clinician experience as a platform you engineer, not a perk you announce,” Manne says. “Compensation sets the entry price, but retention follows friction.”

He recommends measuring after-hours EHR use, inbox volume, clicks per task and schedule predictability, then using those measurements to guide improvements such as ambient documentation and AI-assisted inbox triage.

“Autonomy is a design property, not a slogan,” Manne says, emphasizing that clinicians need real authority over the workflows they use.

“Retention improves when organizations make it easier to do the work they were trained to do.”

– Kat Marie Alvarez, Founder and CEO of Katalyst & Co.

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Build a Culture That Supports the Work

A competitive salary may attract a clinician, but the everyday experience of working in an organization shapes whether that person stays. Kat Marie Alvarez, Founder and CEO of Katalyst & Co., argues that workforce support must be embedded in operations rather than treated as an isolated human resources initiative.

“Compensation attracts clinicians; the conditions they work in determine whether they stay,” Alvarez says. “Workforce support has to be built into operations: manageable workloads, reliable staffing, usable technology and leaders who act on frontline feedback.”

She emphasizes that clinicians need autonomy, opportunities to grow and sufficient support to concentrate on care.

“Retention improves when organizations make it easier to do the work they were trained to do,” Alvarez says.

Vikas Gupta, Technical Manager at HCL America, brings a technology-management perspective to the same challenge. He argues that organizations must reduce burnout by minimizing administrative burdens, improving technology and enabling clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses.

“Compensation gets clinicians in the door, but culture determines whether they stay,” Gupta says.

He also calls for flexible work models, transparent leadership and meaningful participation in decision-making. Personalized pathways into research, teaching, innovation or leadership can help clinicians find purpose beyond their immediate clinical responsibilities.

“In a highly competitive market, retention is increasingly driven by autonomy, purpose, well-being and feeling valued, not just pay,” Gupta says.

“People stay where their health isn’t the price of admission.”

– Mick Safron, Founder and CEO of Biohackers World

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Protect Clinicians’ Health and Recovery Time

Burnout is not simply a matter of morale. Work schedules, missed breaks and inadequate recovery can affect clinicians’ physical and mental well-being. Mick Safron, Founder and CEO of Biohackers World, encourages healthcare organizations to treat clinician health as an operational priority.

“Burnout is often framed as culture, but much of it is physiological: chronic sleep loss, erratic eating, high cortisol and little recovery,” Safron says.

He recommends circadian-aware scheduling, genuine recovery time between shifts and appropriate access to health assessments. He also argues that clinicians should be able to practice preventive, data-driven medicine with tools that support the use of wearable and longitudinal health data.

“Autonomy plus time to do it well beats a modest raise for a clinician who feels they’re practicing below their ability,” Safron says. “People stay where their health isn’t the price of admission.”

Dorothy Riviere, CEO and Founder of Work Resilience, draws on her experience as a practicing physical therapist to highlight the gap between understanding self-care and having the opportunity to practice it.

“Who takes care of the people who take care of everyone else? Usually no one, because we assume clinicians already know how,” Riviere says.

She recalls skipping lunch to see another patient and ending workdays emotionally drained. She also highlights the need to consider the different pressures affecting the healthcare workforce, including the demands faced by women who balance paid clinical work with caregiving at home.

“Give every clinician, from aides to therapists, protected time and real tools to recover physically and mentally,” she says. “Knowing how to care for yourself is not the same as getting to do it.”

The message extends beyond physicians. Retention initiatives should include nurses, therapists, assistants and other clinical professionals whose physical and emotional demands may differ but whose ability to recover matters to safe, sustainable care.

Give Clinicians Control Over Time and Decisions

Schedule flexibility is a meaningful benefit only when it changes clinicians’ day-to-day experience. Harikrishnan Muthukrishnan, Principal IT Developer at BCBS Florida, argues that organizations should focus on three areas.

“Retention is decided by three things clinicians can’t buy with a raise: control over their time, safety when things go wrong, and ownership of their tools,” Muthukrishnan says.

He recommends replacing purely top-down scheduling with self-scheduling, using internal float pools to fill staffing gaps and making call distribution transparent. These measures can give clinicians greater predictability while helping employees understand how scheduling decisions are made.

He also advocates for a just culture that emphasizes learning rather than reflexive punishment.

“Build a just culture: peer support within hours of a hard case, reviews that separate system failures from individual blame, and leaders who model learning over punishment,” he says.

Clinicians should also have meaningful authority over the selection, configuration and retirement of clinical systems and AI tools.

Asaad Hakeem of SARC MedIQ Inc. reinforces the importance of giving clinicians greater control over their work.

He advocates reducing low-value administrative work, providing meaningful autonomy, investing in tools that return time to patient care and establishing visible career paths.

“Retention improves when clinicians feel valued, supported and able to practice at their highest level,” he says.

The common thread is that autonomy requires more than inviting clinicians to meetings. Leaders must give frontline professionals the authority and resources to influence decisions that directly affect care delivery.

Make Career Development Part of the Value Proposition

Professional growth should not depend on a clinician having spare time, personal connections or the willingness to pursue opportunities outside work. Mark Francis, Founder and CEO of CaregiverZone Inc., proposes a more individualized approach to talent development.

“To attract and retain clinical professionals, healthcare organizations should take a page from Hollywood and staff talent management professionals,” Francis says.

He suggests assigning clinicians an internal professional development and talent agent who takes a holistic view of their goals and motivations. Rather than concentrating solely on clinical workload, that person could help identify opportunities to develop new skills, increase professional visibility and expand contributions beyond daily responsibilities.

“This could include opportunities to learn about venture capital and investing, opportunities to serve on the boards of local community organizations or startup HealthTech companies, or publications and speaking opportunities,” he says.

His proposal offers a concrete way to turn career development into a retention strategy: Give clinicians a dedicated advocate who can connect their ambitions with opportunities inside and outside the organization.

“One of the most important value propositions is the opportunity for a more balanced lifestyle.”

– David Zechman, President of The Zechman Group LLC, and retired hospital president and CEO

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Make Lifestyle and Community Part of Recruitment

For clinicians considering a new position, the decision is rarely limited to salary and benefits. David Zechman, President of The Zechman Group LLC, and retired hospital president and CEO, emphasizes that lifestyle and family considerations can influence whether a physician commits to an organization for the long term.

“One of the most important value propositions is the opportunity for a more balanced lifestyle,” Zechman says.

He points to predictable working hours, fewer call responsibilities and more administrative support, particularly for new physicians seeking meaningful time with family or personal interests.

Community can also play a role in recruitment and retention. Zechman stresses the importance of excellent schools, community activities and opportunities for a physician’s spouse to establish personal relationships and participate in local groups.

“Being able to raise or support a family in a community that offers excellent schools and a wide variety of community activities” is an important consideration, he says.

For healthcare executives, this means recruitment should communicate the realities of life outside the workplace as well as the professional opportunity. Schedule transparency, relocation support and connections to local community resources can help clinicians and their families evaluate whether a position offers a sustainable future.

Fix the Administrative Work That Drives People Away

Many clinicians enter healthcare because they want to help patients, yet administrative tasks can consume the time and attention they hoped to devote to care. Mahendran Chinnaiah, Digital Healthcare Architect at a major U.S. healthcare and pharmacy services firm, argues that simplifying everyday work should be central to retention.

He notes that physicians and nurses may spend evenings completing charts, responding to inbox messages and navigating cumbersome computer systems.

“If healthcare groups want people to stay, they have to make the daily work easier,” he says. “That means using smarter technology to handle the paperwork, cutting down pointless administrative tasks and giving teams more say over their own work schedules.”

Administrative burden is not merely an inconvenience for employees. It is a design problem that leaders can identify and address through workflow redesign, better staffing and appropriate technology.

Rethinking the Clinician Experience

• Design technology around clinical workflows. Involve clinicians in purchasing and implementation decisions, then measure whether new tools reduce friction and return time to patient care.
• Build workforce support into daily operations. Address staffing, workload and frontline feedback instead of treating retention as a recruitment or human resources issue.
• Prioritize clinician health and recovery. Establish realistic schedules, reliable breaks and recovery time, extending support to every member of the clinical workforce.
• Give clinicians control over their schedules and a voice in decisions. Promote self-scheduling, transparent call distribution, a just culture and meaningful authority over clinical technology.
• Make culture, flexibility and career growth retention priorities. Reduce burnout, offer flexible work models, promote transparent leadership and create personalized pathways into research, teaching, innovation and leadership.
• Create individualized talent-development plans. Assign clinicians a dedicated development advocate who helps them pursue leadership opportunities, board service, publications, speaking engagements and other professional interests beyond their clinical responsibilities.
• Make work-life balance and community part of the value proposition. Offer predictable hours, manageable call responsibilities and support for clinicians and their families as they establish roots in a community.
• Extend well-being support to every clinical role. Provide protected recovery time and practical physical and mental health resources to everyone, from nursing assistants to therapists and physicians.
• Reduce administrative burdens and expand clinical autonomy. Eliminate low-value tasks, invest in tools that return time to patient care and create visible career paths that help clinicians practice at their highest level.
• Measure and engineer improvements in clinician experience. Track after-hours EHR use, inbox volume, clicks per task and schedule predictability, then use those metrics to guide ongoing improvements.
• Simplify everyday workflows. Use smarter technology, eliminate unnecessary administrative tasks and give clinical teams more say over their schedules so they can focus on patient care.

Building a Workforce That Stays

Healthcare organizations cannot build a sustainable clinical workforce through compensation alone. They must create an environment in which clinicians can deliver excellent care without sacrificing their health, professional ambitions or lives outside work. The perspectives of the Senior Executive Healthcare Think Tank members point to a consistent set of priorities: usable technology, manageable workloads, supportive leadership, meaningful autonomy and opportunities to grow.

The next step is to make these priorities measurable. Organizations that track clinician experience, involve frontline professionals in operational decisions and demonstrate consistent improvements can build a more compelling value proposition than salary offers alone. In a competitive talent market, the strongest retention strategy is to create a workplace where skilled clinicians can do their best work—and see a future worth staying for.