CommonSpirit currently employs approximately 150,000 health care workers across 145 hospitals in 24 states. Through the course of their work with the AHA Suicide Prevention in the Health Care Workforce collaborative, this system chose to focus on improving access to behavioral health and well-being resources.
Prior to beginning with the collaborative, CommonSpirit had already identified the need to streamline their mental health and well-being resources to make them more easily accessible across their large system. Previously, the resources included in their EAP were hard to find and spread out across various platforms. The goal of their chosen initiative was to offer on-demand behavioral health resources and flexible treatment options to their employees, medical staff and their families. Since the collaborative, CommonSpirit has implemented a series of interventions to accomplish this goal: They introduced a digital hub for all well-being resources and programs, consolidated their EAP benefits to one vendor and developed an integrated communication strategy focused on well-being resources.
The first step was introducing their “MyWellness Portal” to serve as a hub for all well-being resources and programs across the system. The introduction of this portal means there is now one place employees can turn to to access support. There are even monetary incentives offered for engaging with this portal. Currently, they have more than 50,000 employees across their system engaging with the portal each month.
The second intervention centered around consolidating their EAP benefits to one vendor. Before this they had multiple EAP vendors, which led to confusion and underutilization of resources. They introduced Lyra Health, an online platform that provides comprehensive mental health care support to employees, in January 2023. Lyra offers free therapy sessions, well-being resources and a 24/7 urgent need hotline. CommonSpirit’s goal over the course of the collaborative was to reach a 4.5% utilization rate across the system; as of July 2023, they are up to 8.7% employee utilization across the system with over 23,000 sessions having been held.
Finally, they developed and implemented an integrated communication strategy to communicate the growth of their EAP benefits. “Connections,” the monthly newsletter, focuses on employee well-being and highlights various aspects of the other two interventions. In addition to communicating the recent updates to their employee well-being programs, they hope the newsletter sheds light on the services that CommonSpirit already has in place in the hopes of increasing awareness and utilization.
In addition, CommonSpirit is working on implementing a Peer Ambassador program in the coming months. Their Peer Ambassadors will receive training and support so they may be able to understand and navigate conversations with coworkers who are impacted by stress, burnout or other pressures. An expansion of this program will include the implementation of “Code Kindness,” an employee well-being response team led by the organization’s chaplain. At this time, CommonSpirit has piloted this program in two local markets, but the system hopes to expand it nationwide in the next year.
