MGMA Insights: How Burnout and Remote Work Are Reshaping Healthcare Leadership
Download MP3Hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another MGMA Insights podcast today. Our guest is Lauren Howard. She's an inspiring leader in the healthcare and mental health space.
Daniel Williams:She's also the CEO of LB Health, a virtual mental health treatment program designed to help individuals recover from burnout, toxic work environments, and trauma. Now she's also the CEO of L2, and that's a platform that's challenging the traditional norms of professionalism for women. And we're excited to have Lauren on the show. So Lauren, welcome.
Lauren Howard:Thank you so much for having me.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. You and I were talking offline. Have interacted with directly, indirectly with the MGMA audience and people who are make up that audience over the years. So we're glad to have you on this podcast today. I learned about you through LinkedIn.
Daniel Williams:I feel like people do a lot of networking now and make connections and contacts through platforms like LinkedIn. So I'm so glad I got to meet you on there. So what I want to do is, just ask you about these different organizations, LB Health and L2. Talk about those programs, how you started them, what initiated that spark in the first place.
Lauren Howard:Yeah, absolutely. L2 is actually the predecessor to LB Health and it's still an active company. We still publish content there. We publish other writers who share their stories and content there. But truly they both came out of the same thing, which is that I left a job that was really toxic, just bad for me several years ago.
Lauren Howard:And had spent the entire time there when I knew I wasn't I don't know if I knew I wasn't happy for a long time. I think I was very much deeply in this belief that this was the best it could be. It wasn't gonna be better than this. And knowing that I wasn't loving my life, but also thinking that was just the way it was supposed to be. And I was tremendously burned out.
Lauren Howard:It was a really hostile environment. And when I finally left very unceremoniously, which is not like me, I felt like I had all of this kind of potential energy built up that of all of these things that had happened that I didn't know what to do with. And I process by writing things out. That's how I get things from my brain and get my brain to settle down. To this day, I don't know why I started doing it, but I just started writing about these things on LinkedIn.
Lauren Howard:I wasn't a LinkedIn user really at all. Just started very quickly. The response that I thought I would get was, oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you or like, why are you sharing sad stories for attention on the Internet? Mhmm. And instead, what I got was, wait, that happened to me and I thought it was just me.
Lauren Howard:And I went, okay, if it's you and it's me and it's my entire inbox, then maybe it's all of us and we just start talking about it. That turned into Altu, which is a community and a site where we publish regular content about what does it even mean to be a woman in the workplace? Why does working while female seem to be a hazard? Where, how do we get around, these things that we've been taught about how we're supposed to be in the workplace, how we're supposed to present, which were never actually real. And why is it so wild to ask why?
Lauren Howard:Like, why are these things happening? And so we had a, we have had, we continue to have really just incredible conversations through that platform about these questions that I think we need to be answering. But my background is in behavioral health administration. I ran a for about a decade. And as much as l two is my whole heart, I would still sit around and go, I don't think we're doing enough.
Lauren Howard:I don't think having the conversations is enough. Like validating people and making them feel seen, that's really important, but there's a piece missing to this. And one day earlier this year, I don't know why it took three and a half years for it to happen, but one day earlier this year, it like smacked me in the face and I went, oh wait, this is what it is. Oh, we're supposed to be actually delivering the mental healthcare because I know how to do that. And my business partner is a physician who's licensed in 50 States and we actually own four practices, three practices together at the time.
Lauren Howard:And I called him up and I said, Hey, do you want to open a mental health practice? And he said, Sure. And I went, you don't have more questions than that? And he was like, no. I went, okay.
Lauren Howard:And then I called a friend of mine who's an incredible therapist, and it very much went the same way. And within a couple of hours, we went from, I think I have this crazy idea to, oh, we're actually doing this now. And that was less than six months ago. And we now provide mental health services mental health services in 13 states and we'll be in 20 by the end of the month, 50 by the end of the year. And we do support groups, which is really where all of this started was everybody coming today together and saying this is hard and I don't know why.
Lauren Howard:And our support groups are available in all 50 States already. And they're $20 a person. Because part of the reason that so many people were struggling to find support was that it was inaccessible. And so we made it hyper accessible. And that's really where, they're two different companies, but they're born out of the same thing.
Lauren Howard:And they connect to our other companies as well, because when you're trying to help a person, there's a whole person there, regardless what your mission with them is. And I think that's how all of this progressed. If you had told me three and a half years ago when I personally was on my couch unable to get up because I was so burned out that my body and my brain just disconnected, stopped talking to each other, that we would be here doing this work particularly, I would have told you we're insane and walked away, but the universe had other plans and now we're here.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Wow. That is a really powerful story. And I appreciate you sharing that with us. In looking at your information on the companies, one of the things that you really look at, you really address the feelings of isolation and burnout that so many people feel.
Daniel Williams:What are, obviously this can occur and create within people in many different ways, but are there some common themes? What are you seeing that is causing this sort of epidemic of isolation, this epidemic of burnout right now, particularly if you could speak to it even from the healthcare side of things, if you're seeing that from people?
Lauren Howard:Yeah, I think there's so many layers to it that it's hard to pinpoint any one thing that has contributed significantly or more significantly than others. But I will say that it is not a coincidence that people are reporting significantly more burnout post pandemic than they did prior. I think we don't address the fact that regardless whether you got sick or not or somebody you love got sick or not, the pandemic was a global trauma. Everybody experienced loss of way of life. We experienced loss of routine.
Lauren Howard:We experienced loss of social opportunities. There was social isolation, etcetera. We everything we knew about our lives changed in like a two week period. And then not only that, but it changed in a two week period with this idea that it would go back to normal just a short period of time. And then it dragged on for three years.
Lauren Howard:And the 21 people you ask, it's still happening now. Not a pandemic but the restrictions are still there for a lot of people. And so I think if I had to pick one thing that has really pushed us to either experience these things more significantly or recognize them more significantly. It was the pandemic, either because of just because the loss the loss of way of life and the considerable isolation that came from not seeing people in person, but also from this very shifted perspective on how we're supposed to feel about work to begin with. When you're stuck in your house because people all over the world are dying unexpectedly and it's terrifying to walk out your front door, all of a sudden you reassess your priorities and you go, should I feel anxious on Saturday nights when my boss texts me that there's an emergency that's never been an emergency?
Lauren Howard:No, probably not. Should I be working eighty hour weeks for a medal that doesn't exist? There's no trophy.
Daniel Williams:Right.
Lauren Howard:No, probably not. And so when your perspective on the, your why changes, and then on top of it, everybody just went through this really hard thing. Those things can't be, those things can't be extricated from each other. And there's not a coincidence that we are experiencing such a huge, whether it's an uptake or whether it's just better communication around the fact that so many people are feeling this, so many people are feeling isolated, burned out, depressed, etc. But then I will also say that our workplaces aren't doing anything to help in a lot of cases.
Lauren Howard:I think the more we treat people like they're numbers and not humans who are performing a job, the more we dehumanize them, the more they don't like going to work, the more toxic that environment gets. And so it's a lot of things, but there are the people who have performed jobs have never been anything other than people. And when you work in roles that you constantly feel like your need to be human, which has never gone away, is going to interfere with your ability to be employed. That leads to the kinds of stressors that we see lead to burnout. We talk to people all the time about the things that have them feeling burned out and it's never their job duties.
Lauren Howard:Never. They'll say it's the mental gymnastics at the workplace. It's the politics around doing their job. It's managing up. It's contorting themselves into a pretzel to fulfill whatever obligation they have to fulfill because they can't just do the job.
Lauren Howard:They have to do all the things before they can do the job. And if you ask them, okay, if you could just do your job duties and not have all of the ancillary stress, would you go would you leave work and worry about, would you leave work and worry all the time? And they go, no, cause I'm not thinking about my job duties when I get home or when I clock out. I'm thinking about how's going to, how's this going to reflect on me so that understands that I've done the work and have I reported back on this correctly? And are they going to think that I'm doing my job?
Lauren Howard:Are they going to think that I'm effective? Those are the things that people report to us are actually the drivers behind the burnout. Almost never the job.
Daniel Williams:So, that is so interesting, and what I want to follow-up with is these things, these environments, these political environments or toxic environments, they were around before the pandemic. Were they in as much supply, so to speak? Prior to that, what is it right now that's going on that you're seeing this uptick in burnout and or toxic environments? Is it even people feeling more open or vulnerable to express it or report it? What, help me understand that aspect of it.
Lauren Howard:Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think there has been a general shift of priorities. I think we're having better conversations about you are not defined by your work. Your worth does not come from your work. You are a human regardless what your title is.
Lauren Howard:You are a valuable human regardless what your title is. And so I think all of that has been instrumental in creating some of this stuff. And do I think it's worse now? I don't really know, but I know that people are responding more negatively toward it now. I think part of it may be some backlash for what we call the great resignation when so many people were just walking away from I was one of those people.
Lauren Howard:And just ex- they were able to just walk into another job and it was not a problem. And now the employers are really back in control of that hiring landscape. And there is something that feels a little bit, I don't know if vindictive is the word, but like very almost nefarious about the fact that this is our we're it's a employer's market. You're not the commodity anymore. We are.
Lauren Howard:And so I think there's some of that. But I also think I agree with you that we have started to make a shift toward teaching people what's okay, what they deserve. We say this all the time. A paycheck is not a permission slip for abuse. You aren't subject to abuse just because you got a job.
Lauren Howard:They still have to treat you like a human. They still have to respect you as a person. That is in a lot of cases misaligned from what we see in actual workplaces currently. And it's very hard when people know that and their employer has not caught up to it. And so I think that kind of misalignment is where the real friction is coming from.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And I want to get your thoughts on this part of it as well. When we did have that initial shutdown, lockdown from the pandemic, we had a lot of downtime, so to speak, that maybe we hadn't previously had as people who were working, people reflected. I know people I knew personally made personal choices saying, I'm moving back home. I'm realizing I don't know how long I have.
Daniel Williams:And so if I have X amount of time on this earth, then I want to spend it with family. I want to spend it doing this. Or maybe I want to work from a hybrid environment or a remote environment. So many different options there. It really allowed us to reflect on what's really important to us.
Daniel Williams:And maybe at that point you realize, doing the filing the, this file or that file or whatever that function of the job might be, it's a means to an end, but maybe there are other things that I wanna pursue as well. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that, if you're seeing that come out, or a prioritization of work and life, so to speak.
Lauren Howard:Yeah. I we saw a lot of it once it became clear that remote work was gonna stay for a lot of people for a while. People started making what would previously have been selfish decisions because it was allowed. The number of people who moved across country or moved out of the city or looked for less expensive housing, while at the same time increasing productivity in workplaces. So they weren't all together, but in general, went up during the pandemic, not down.
Lauren Howard:And so people were both able to recreate their jobs into new structures that worked for them personally, but also they were able to do it in a place where they wanted to be, that either felt safer, that felt like home, that felt whatever. And so a lot of people learned that they could have both. You can have the life with the people you want to be around and still do the job. I think what we're seeing now though, is this is obvious. Most of the big companies are calling their people back in.
Lauren Howard:People who have moved across country, people who did their jobs exceptionally during the pandemic remote and who are now getting called back into offices for reasons that don't make sense because their jobs were fine. And that's another huge source of friction because it serves the company. It doesn't serve the humans who are operating the company. And the company, instead of acknowledging and they never would, but for the most part I have seen instead of acknowledging the realities of why they're really asking people back, they give them reasons that that don't benefit those individuals. So we think the team works better when you're in person and can collaborate.
Lauren Howard:And everybody's going, we've been doing that for four years and we didn't have a problem. But why does it matter now? And the reality is, and this is the unfortunate and somewhat nefarious reality of these push to return to office, but there's a lot of commercial real estate sitting empty. Right. And most of investments are in their real estate or, and a lot of big banks investments are in that real estate.
Lauren Howard:And if those real estate, if those real estate holdings go down in value, the company of itself is less valuable. And I tell people this all the time. And I it's not that I don't understand it. I understand it financially, but I also think that if you the ROI on having happy employees is more important than the ROI on an expensive building. And we talk about it all the time.
Lauren Howard:That is a very conscious choice to value property over your people. And you can't expect that people are gonna be excited to go to a workplace like that. You just can't. And especially when it goes against all of the data that we've seen except property values. That's the only data that doesn't support it.
Daniel Williams:Wow, that is remarkable. I think that's a wonderful place to just end this conversation. And I did want to give you an opportunity. Do you have any resources that you could share with us, some links, or where can people connect with you to learn more about the work that you're doing? And if they need help to get help as well?
Lauren Howard:Yeah, absolutely. You can find our mental health services as well as accessible group services. You do not have to be enrolled in mental health to use the groups at lbhealth.com. L B E as in Edward, E as in Edward, health Com. There are also burnout inventories there.
Lauren Howard:There's some questions. There's some resources for how to deal with certain situations where you can find more help. And then our other website is L2.com, e l l e t w 0 Com. Lots of content there on what it's like to be a woman in the workplace, how you navigate through those things. And then you can always find me on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com/in/l2elletwo.
Lauren Howard:I post there literally every day. I'm always there running my mouth, and I'm pretty easy to find at any of those places if I can help at all.
Daniel Williams:Exactly. That's where I found you. We met there. And so I'm so glad I don't go out to LinkedIn very often, but you popped up in my stream when I was out there and I went, I gotta talk to this person. This sounds pretty impressive.
Daniel Williams:Lauren Howard, thanks for joining us on the MGMA Insights podcast.
Lauren Howard:Awesome. It's so wonderful. Thank you for having me.
Daniel Williams:All right. That is going to do it for this episode. As Lauren was sharing those links, we will put those in the episode show notes. We'll also develop an article on MGMA.com where you can access the direct links to her and her resources as well. Until then, thank you all for being MGMA podcast listeners.
