Pediatric care is a step away from crisis. Over half of pediatricians report burnout, and nearly half are considering leaving clinical practice altogether in the next five years. Those who remain face mounting pressures — from increased administrative burdens due to leaner care teams to the return of outbreaks like measles, and managing complex care for the 1 in 3 kids who live with a chronic condition. Millions of families are relying on a healthcare system fraying at the seams. The question is: can we do more than simply brace for impact?
I’ve spent my career building national healthcare practice groups — scaling outpatient practices into hundreds of clinics, with thousands of clinicians helping millions everyday. I’m not just seeing the crisis develop at work, I’m feeling its strain in my own home. A little over a year ago, my young daughter was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, and navigating her care became my family’s full-time focus. Even with access to exceptional care in our local community, our family found ourselves navigating a maze of specialists — each assessing her condition in a silo, often without shared records or coordinated communication with other clinicians. The burden of connecting the dots and bridging communication gaps fell on us, revealing just how fragmented the system is — and how exhausting and confusing that lack of coordination can be for both families and clinicians.
What I’ve learned across my professional and personal experiences is this: there is no singular cause to pediatrician burnout. Rather, it’s a web of interconnected issues, compounded and feeding upon each other. And if we want to truly support pediatricians and the children they care for, we need to stop treating symptoms and start untangling the root causes.
Tracing the sources of burnout
- The long hours of administrative burdens: Pediatricians spend far too many hours on manual, time-consuming administrative tasks like electronic health record (EHR) documentation, billing paperwork, and navigating insurance requirements. Three-quarters of pediatricians report EHR documentation is a major or moderate burden, and often take work home to stay afloat managing extensive paperwork — all of which detracts from time spent with patients and time that could otherwise be spent with their own families.
- The financial strain of shrinking reimbursements: Pediatric clinicians earn less than specialists in almost every other medical field in the United States, and chronic underpayment shrinks earnings while work increases. For many, the mental and emotional weight of providing care to patients only compounds when they’re managing a practice that operates on razor-thin margins. This is further exacerbated by the fact that approximately half of the children in the US are covered by Medicaid, with oftentimes underfunded programs depending on the state that put further pressure on pediatrician reimbursement.
- The ever-increasing shortage: More physicians in residency and other training programs are pursuing alternative specialties due to this lack of pay, leaving the remaining workforce stretched thinner. When clinicians have to absorb higher patient volumes, longer waitlists, and more urgent consults without additional support, burnout skyrockets. The NCHWA projects a continued shortage, and one that will grow to roughly 13,000 pediatricians by 2037, which only points to further build up of workloads for remaining practices.
- The lack of coordination across care: Pediatricians are often left to fill in the gaps of our currently fragmented care system, with the lack of efficient communication across disciplines adding unnecessary friction and cognitive overload to daily practice. Whether they’re chasing down consults or synthesizing conflicting input, clinicians find the most common barriers largely revolve around splintered communication and coordination between the specialists involved in a patient’s care. When care coordination falters amongst clinicians, the responsibility falls squarely on the family, who have to make sure information isn’t missed and the right next steps are taken, making stressful times even more overwhelming.
Pediatric burnout’s far-reaching impacts
Burnout isn’t just a workplace issue for clinicians — it’s a slow erosion of well-being. Many pediatric clinicians report feeling emotionally depleted, undervalued, and isolated in their work. When the people who care for children are mentally exhausted, it becomes harder to show up with the empathy, energy, and attention that quality care demands.
When pediatricians are rushing between appointments, working through layers of red tape, and stretched too thin, care suffers. Children wait longer for diagnoses. Parents leave with unanswered questions. Errors happen. Physician burnout can double the risk of patient safety and in pediatrics — where early intervention can shape a child’s entire life trajectory — that delay or misstep can have long-lasting consequences.
Burnout also feeds into the growing fragmentation of pediatric care. When a child’s care involves multiple specialists — and communication among them is slow or nonexistent — the pediatrician is increasingly required to be the de facto coordinator. But without the time or support to manage that role, even the best-intentioned care can become disjointed. Families are left piecing together information, oftentimes having to step into the shared role of coordinator, while pediatricians carry the stress of holding a system together that isn’t designed to support them.
Solving for a stronger future
To truly address pediatrician burnout, we need solutions that tackle the root issues — and that requires foundational rethinking of the way care is delivered. In building wholly new models, reimagining sustainable workloads and creating new incentives for entering pediatrics play vital roles – but the intentional integration of technology will truly transform what’s possible. That effort starts with reducing administrative burdens and fostering cohesive collaboration across specialties, and eventually expanding into helping to inform care. As an example, AI can be used to summarize comprehensive medical history across a patient’s entire lifespan and surface relevant clinical research, helping increase clinician preparation and keep them informed on the latest findings before an appointment occurs.
If we can go beyond band-aids and provide scalable approaches to reducing strain, clinicians across the country can achieve a sustainable work-life balance and reignite the very basis of their decision to enter pediatrics: to deliver amazing care that improves the quality of a child’s life.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. As more pediatricians leave the field, the remaining workforce simply can’t continue on this path. This is not just a short-term problem for a clinic’s schedule next week — it’s a generational health crisis in the making. When children don’t get the care they need early on, minor issues can escalate into complex, costly health problems. Chronic conditions go unmanaged. Behavioral concerns go untreated. Emergency departments become the fallback. The result is a more expensive, less effective system — and generations of kids who deserve better.
In my 15+ healthcare career, I have not come across a group of clinicians more mission oriented or selfless than pediatricians. They did not go into the speciality for money or prestige, but simply because they love caring for children. As a society, it’s now time to care for those pediatricians that are in turn spending their lives to care for our children.
Photo: Suriyapong Thongsawang, Getty Images
Danish Qureshi is the founder and CEO of Zarminali Pediatrics, a first of its kind pediatric multispecialty group working to redefine what modern, coordinated care can look like for pediatricians and families nationwide.
Prior to Zarminali, Danish was the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer of behavioral healthcare company LifeStance Health. Danish oversaw all operations nationwide of LifeStance-supported practices, as well as the shared services teams, including marketing, customer care, real estate, credentialing, integrations, and payor contracting. Additionally, he oversaw all growth initiatives, including de novo site openings and the expansion of LifeStance’s existing footprint into new markets, clinician recruiting, and patient marketing nationwide. Danish has also held roles at Accelecare Wound Centers and Nautic Partners, a private equity firm with over $9.5b managed since inception. He began his career as a management consultant at Bain & Company.
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