Minimizing Medical Burnout: Mila Verkhoglaz and Yelena Sokolsky On How Hospitals and Medical Practices Are Helping To Reduce Physician and Healthcare Worker Burnout

An Interview With Dan Rodrigues

Provide adequate compensation for caregivers and healthcare workers.

The pandemic was hard on all of us. But statistics have shown that the pressures of the pandemic may have hit physicians and healthcare workers the hardest. While employment is starting to return to pre-pandemic levels generally, the healthcare sector is lagging behind with a significant percentage of healthcare workers not returning to work. This is one of the factors that is causing a shortage of doctors. Some experts say that the US may soon be short almost 124,000 physicians. (See here for example)

What are hospitals and medical practices doing to help ease the extreme mental strain of doctors and healthcare workers? What are hospitals and medical practices doing to help solve the scourge of physician and healthcare worker burnout?

To address these questions, we are talking to hospital administrators, medical clinic executives, medical school experts, and experienced physicians who can share stories and insights from their experience about “How Hospitals and Medical Practices Are Helping To Reduce Physician and Healthcare Worker Burnout”. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mila Verkhoglaz and Yelena Sokolsky.

Mila Verkhoglaz, Vice-President of Galaxy Home Care.

Mila has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry. She held a variety of management positions at Fortune 500 companies. Mila has also owned and operated a successful home care company in Northern NJ from 2003 to 2021.

Mila has been featured in the press numerous times because of her sound expertise of the home care sector. Mila is a valuable resource to the NYC and Nassau community when it comes to trending topics related to home care and healthcare. She has become a trusted source to reporters throughout the local market and the country for her ability to talk about complicated topics in a manner that allows the public to understand.

Yeldna Sokolsky, CEO of Galaxy Home Care.

Yelena Sokolsky is Career Registered Professional Nurse-Entrepreneur who impacted lives of members in the community since 2006.

Yelena is currently an Owner/Administrator/Director of Patient services with Galaxy Home Care, an NYC-based home care agency. Prior to starting Galaxy Home Care in 2021, Yelena served as a Director of Patient services for a large, established home care company with thousands of patients and caregivers. Yelena also has an extensive experience as a VP of Operations with major Medicare-certified home health care agencies.

Yelena holds Bachelor of Science Nursing degree and Bachelor of Arts Psychology degree.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! I know that you are a very busy person. Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

Galaxy Home Care is a company with deep roots in home health care. Our management team and staff have decades of home health care experience so that we can provide the full range of in-home care services to individuals and families.

Whether you are eligible for Medicaid or paying with private funds, we will provide you or your love-ones with the best home care solutions.

Galaxy Home Care is always ready to provide compassionate quality in-home care services to our clients so they can remain safe and independent in the comfort of their own homes, wherever they may live.

What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.

Mila: In 2003, I received a call from our elderly neighbor. Her daughter had left for a two-week vacation and she did not feel well. Alone and terrified, she asked me to keep her company. My husband and I spent the next week and a half taking turns sleeping on an air mattress in her living room and staying with her. We realized the need most people have to provide quality care for their elder family members and we knew then this was exactly what we wanted to do. We also discovered that caring for a family member is not easy, nor is it something most family members are prepared to do. The burdens of family caregiving can lead to resentment, burnout, and friction among family members. This inspired me to pursue a career in this industry.

Yelena: I am a registered nurse with over 18 years of experience in home care. I first realized the importance of home care when I had to take care of her parents and grandparents. As a family of immigrants, it started with bridging the language barrier. That eventually led to a life in home care. Growing up, I was always interested in working with and for families. I was completely responsible for my grandparents and due to the language barrier, I was always helping them set up services. I was responsible for making sure their Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, home health aides — all of that — were taken care of. This industry and role came naturally to me.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

Today, Galaxy serves about 100 patients with about 300 employees, and we are extremely excited to continue expanding our new company.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• There is no doubt that hard work is one of the most important factors for success. If you are willing to invest your time and energy into something, you will eventually succeed.
• The personalization and white-glove handling of the elderly is a huge responsibility. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to ensure that they are properly taken care of. However, there are some ways to make the process easier on the caregiver. Some examples of how this can be done are:
• Hiring a health aide who is specifically trained in caring for the elderly.
• Making sure that they have all their medications so they don’t forget them.
• Providing them with entertainment to keep their mind active and engaged.
• The company should also offer competitive salaries for the position and for the region in which it is located. It is important that the salary is competitive because it will attract qualified candidates who are looking for a job with good pay, flexibility, and benefits. In order to attract and retain qualified employees, it is important to offer them a competitive salary and benefits package. Some of the most common benefits that companies offer are health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off. Health insurance offers protection against the high costs of medical care, retirement plans ensure that employees will have income when they retire and paid time off provides workers with a chance to rest from work or take care of their families. These are just a few examples of the many types of benefits that employers can provide for their workers.

Ok, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about minimizing medical burnout. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define “Physician and Healthcare Worker Burnout”? Does it just mean poor job satisfaction? Can you explain?

A basic answer is a physical and emotional exhaustion caused by continual periods of stress. While most of the white-collar workers were working comfortably from their homes during the heights of the COVID -19 pandemic, our front-line workers/caregivers continued to make visits to our clients. You can only imagine the fear and insecurity they experienced — “will I catch COVID from the client, or the subway or bus while travelling to see clients and will I spread COVID to patients, love-ones and co-workers?” At the time, lack of personal protective equipment and unreliable guidance from the CDC, state and local governments continued to increase the level of stress. Even before the pandemic health employees experienced high burnout rates. Now with the pandemic, burnout rates have been accelerated. COVID has caused a shortage of Home Healthcare workers because many of them stayed away, and many in the field feel exhausted. The experiences of Home Healthcare workers during this pandemic have been traumatic.

How would you define or describe the opposite of burnout?

Caregivers love what they do but it’s the working conditions and unrealistic expectations that cause poor job satisfaction. Offering your staff a rewarding work environment means they come home every day feeling accomplished. We are practitioners in the world of home healthcare — our goal is to serve clients and support our employees to the fullest. However, in one word, the opposite of burnout is engagement. To be engaged is to be completely present in your work. In fact, work is no longer viewed as work when one is fully engaged.

From your experience, perspective, or research, what are the main causes of Physician and Healthcare Worker Burnout?

Caregiving jobs can be rewarding but can also cause burnout because the job is frequently very demanding. In general, some of the top reasons that cause burnouts are unfair treatment, unclear roles, little to no communication from the manager, and unreasonable time frames. Stress is often one component that leads to burnout. Additionally, burnout experienced by the employees impacts the worker’s performance and the quality of care provided to the patients. Employees with burnout increase the likelihood of making mistakes. An error in treatment or the medication for the patient can be life-threatening.

Have you seen burnout impact your own organization? Can you give a first hand description of how burnout can impact the operations of an organization?

To reduce burnout, we ask questions that are relevant and timely. We prevent employee burnouts by asking our employees what they value and need. Gaining insights from our employees through questions provides valuable information as to what makes employees feel motivated, and what doesn’t. Question around overall job satisfaction, work-life balance and flexibility, employee recognition, compensation, and effective communication with the manager. Our field employees are the ones who are the face of the company, and whether or not it runs smoothly depends on them.

Does your practice currently offer any mental health resources for providers or clinical staff? We’d love to hear about it.

Caregiving jobs can be rewarding but can also cause burnout. This is because the job is frequently very demanding. In general, some of the top reasons that cause burnouts are unfair treatment, unclear roles, little to no communication from the manager, and unreasonable time frames. Stress is often one component that leads to burnout.

We strive to avoid this problem by keeping a close eye on our teams — how they’re feeling, their feedback to us (and feedback from clients), what they need to be happy at work.

In my work I have found that streamlining operational efficiency with digital transformation and automated processes helps to ease the workload of providers and clinical staff. Has that been your experience as well? Do you think that streamlining operational efficiency can be one of the tools to minimize medical burnout? We’d love to hear your perspective.

We are always working to improve the work experience for our staff.

Galaxy Home Care utilizes the latest software tools available to us to efficiently and effectively operate our home healthcare company. However, as everyone knows software and processes are only as good as they are used by the management and administrative staff. As you mentioned, operational efficiency is one of our top goals. That being said, we are in people business, and we provide services that are very personal in nature. We deal with people — patients, caregivers, family members, state officials, insurance personnel, medical personnel, and many other players. There are a lot of moving parts and not all of them always work in synchrony.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you share 5 things that hospitals and medical practices can do to reduce physician and healthcare worker burnout?

Physicians and healthcare workers are among the most stressed out professionals in America. They have to deal with a lot of stressors such as long hours, heavy workload, and an emotionally taxing day-to-day experience working with those in need. We recommend that leaders in healthcare do the following to prevent their staff from burning out:

1. Create a culture of care and compassion.

2. Reduce the workload of caregivers and healthcare workers.

3. Offer support to caregivers and healthcare workers.

4. Provide adequate compensation for caregivers and healthcare workers.

5. Implement a wellness program for providers.

What can concerned friends, colleagues, and life partners do to help someone they care about reverse burnout?

When we coach caregivers who feel burned out, we follow these simple themes:

1. We uncover their strengths and weaknesses.

3. We encourage development of strong partners at work.

4. We encourage communication with management.

5. We identify a go-to manager who will listen.

6. We encourage good health habits.

7. If all the above fail, we work with the caregivers on a career change.

Anyone who is concerned about the burnout can follow these guidelines.

What are a few of the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to reverse burnout in themselves or others? What can they do to avoid those mistakes?

Some people attempt to reverse burnout by themselves without any help. I think that it’s difficult to do it on your own. Communication with peers and management, providing feedback, and sharing the struggles to management without hesitation is important to get to the root cause that cause stress and burnout.

Burnout experienced by the employees impacts the worker’s performance and the quality of care provided to the patients. Employees experiencing burnout are more likely to mistakes. An error in treatment or the medication for the patient can be life-threatening.

In these instances, the lesson to learn is don’t ‘push through it.’ When medical staff cannot provide safe care, they deserve and need a break and resources to hit refresh.

Ok, we are nearly done. Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

There are many people who need home health care services for different reasons. Some may have a disability, others are elderly and others still have a chronic illness.

In order to provide the best home health care service for the elderly and disabled, we need to understand their needs and requirements. This will help us provide them with the best care possible.

The need for home health care services has increased in the last few decades. With the increase in population, more and more people are living alone. This is a major factor that contributes to the rise in home health care service.

In addition, our aging population is also increasing the need for home care services. As we grow older, our health condition deteriorates and we become less self-sufficient to take care of ourselves. We need someone to provide assistance in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle or else we risk becoming bedridden or disabled.

In recent years, there has been an increase of technology that can help people with disabilities or chronic illnesses maintain their independence at home. These technologies make it possible for them to live an independent life while still receiving necessary medical attention from professionals remotely through video.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Check out our website: galaxyhomecareny.com

Find us on Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Galaxyhomecare/

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About The Interviewer: Dan Rodrigues is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tebra, a leader in practice growth technology and cloud-based clinical and financial software for independent practices. With an all-in-one, purpose-built platform to drive practice success and modernize every step of the patient journey, Tebra provides digital tools and support to attract new patients, deliver modern care, get paid quickly, and operate efficiently. Rodrigues’ business insights have been featured in publications including Forbes, Fierce Healthcare, and AP News.