$10+ Billion Health System Protects $25 Million in Revenue by Preventing Surprise Clinician Resignations
Clinician turnover is a top challenge for U.S. health systems, with costs spanning recruitment, onboarding, lost revenue, and operational disruption. For one $10+ billion multi-state health system, retaining clinicians is both a financial and strategic priority.
HEALTH SYSTEM PROFILE
Health System Overview
- Catholic U.S. health care system
- 15,000 clinicians, 20+ hospitals, nearly 500 physician offices and other outpatient and virtual care services, and about 10 post-acute facilities
- One of the largest employers in every community it serves
- Total annual operating revenue over $10 billion
The Challenge: Hidden Turnover Risk
In its Wisconsin division, leaders were faced with several critical challenges:
- Increasing turnover in a competitive labor market
- Difficulty identifying clinicians most likely to resign before it’s too late
- Limitations of traditional survey-based approaches, which capture only partial or delayed insights
- Financial and operational impacts of turnover, including recruitment expenses, lost productivity, and patient access
Doctors are leaving medicine at alarming rates, and this exodus affects both patient care and institutional stability. This health system wanted to get ahead of it.
Notably, the two health system champions of the Atalan platform had themselves stepped away from daily clinical practice in their specialty fields, partly due to the administrative burdens on care providers.
One of them recalls a colleague who spent her days seeing patients and her evenings with her family, then set her alarm for 2:00 a.m. to catch up on documentation before starting a new day of patient care. That doctor moved to a job with a research company.
“They have this obligation to their patients and to finish their work, but at the immensely high cost of their own personal well-being. I respect immensely our practicing clinicians for how they manage in this environment.”
— Chief Medical Information Officer
The other doctor notes that none of the family medicine residents she trained with remained in the specialty.
“Either they’re doing administration, they’re doing leadership, or they’re doing only virtual visits. I thought for sure I would be a family medicine doctor forever. I lasted five years before I had to start thinking of something different.”
— System Medical Director, Well-being
Retention has long been a high priority for this health system. Prior to Atalan, the health system’s retention strategy relied on surveys and routine HR reporting. While these approaches provided some insight into overall engagement, they failed to reveal the “silent sufferers” – clinicians who may be quietly considering leaving but don’t provide feedback. Leaders needed more precise, actionable data to reduce turnover.
The Solution: Clinician Retention Intelligence (CRI)
The health system decided to leverage Atalan, the industry’s first-of-its-kind Clinician Retention Intelligence (CRI) platform. The platform integrates with the health system’s existing EHR and HRIS data to provide real-time, actionable insights about clinician retention. The organization started with its 1,129 physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) in Wisconsin.
“This dashboard is really an innovative way to look at retention risk because it’s not just relying on subjective survey data. It’s really using that objective data. In addition to being subjective, most surveys designed to shed light on clinician experience are confidential and anonymous. We can’t help people when we don’t know who needs help.”
— System Medical Director, Well-being
Atalan’s CRI platform provided the health system with:
- Predictive analytics: Identifying clinicians at risk of resignation, even among those who do not participate in surveys – the “silent sufferers”
- Objective data metrics: Time spent on patient documentation, after-hours work, tenure, patient volume, and scheduling patterns
- Actionable interventions: Evidence-based recommendations for retaining clinicians, such as flexible scheduling, mentorship, and targeted workload adjustments
- Operational integration: Dashboards and monthly notifications for HR business partners and system leaders
“Atalan’s platform allows us to see risks before they become resignations and provides guidance on where to act.”
— System Medical Director, Well-being
The work with Atalan is ongoing, with an initial measurement period running from January 2025 to June 2025. During this time, HR business partners and system-level leaders used the platform to identify high-risk clinicians and implement targeted retention interventions.
The health system’s collaborative approach to CRI included:
- Training and Buy-In: Physicians, clinic managers, and HR partners were trained to interpret dashboard insights and take action
- Layered Analytics: The platform flagged clinicians and departments showing those at high risk of resignation, including those with after-hours or weekend workloads
- 10 HR business partners each received monthly notifications informing them of emerging trends
- 6 clinicians per HR business partner were prioritized monthly
- Specific, actionable causes were identified, driving 30 targeted local interventions
- Actionable Recommendations: Actionable next steps were recommended to operational leaders
- Integration Into Routine Touchpoints:Dashboards and notifications were incorporated into one-on-one meetings and regular rounding, allowing timely interventions
Transparency and trust were key in the implementation. The data was used to support clinicians, not to monitor productivity or penalize staff. Leaders aimed to intervene in ways that would stabilize schedules, workloads, and team dynamics.
The health system’s physicians were eager for a tool to predict and prevent resignations, recognizing that it gave them the means to address concerns before clinicians left and workloads became unsustainable. The goal was to help all clinicians – not to invade privacy, but to make their work lives less taxing. When clinicians learned how Atalan could help, they saw it as a supportive, empowering resource.
The HR, Quality, and Informatics teams work hand-in-hand, creating an interdisciplinary effort that makes retention measurable and actionable. This collaboration ensures the results aren’t siloed, but instead become part of a systemwide strategy to support clinicians.
The Impact: Measurable Reduction in Resignations
The pilot, which included a combination of retention initiatives implemented by the health system, yielded significant outcomes. Atalan made those results measurable, attributable, and communicable to clinicians.
- Turnover fell by 40%
- 31 providers were retained, who would have otherwise resigned
- Protected $25 million in revenue that would have otherwise been lost
- Key risk factors improved with statistical significance:
- Time spent on patient history decreased by 80%
- Time spent on orders decreased by 53%
- Appointment completion increased by 9%
With Atalan, leaders can act proactively and precisely to retain clinicians, while also measuring progress, validating which efforts mattered most, and sharing successes transparently with care teams.
Financially, the results are compelling: preventing resignation avoids costly recruitment, onboarding, and lost patient revenue, while also maintaining operational stability and continuity of care.
Why It Matters: Financial and Operational Impact
Clinician resignation carries significant ripple effects:
- Financial: Recruitment costs, sign-on bonuses, lost revenue, and onboarding expenses
- Operational: Remaining clinicians face an increased workload, which can trigger additional turnover
- Patient Care: Resignations can lead to service gaps, longer wait times, and reduced continuity of care
By proactively identifying and retaining at-risk clinicians, the health system mitigates these risks, preserves revenue, and strengthens team stability.
What’s Next: Scaling a Proactive Mindset
“We’re starting in Wisconsin, and then our goal is to be able to very quickly expand across the system.”— System Medical Director, Well-being
Following the Wisconsin pilot, the health system plans to expand the Atalan platform across multiple states to support clinicians system-wide. Objectives include:
- Expanding predictive analytics and intervention strategies to additional clinicians and service lines
- Standardizing measurement and tracking of retention interventions
- Embedding predictive retention into organizational strategy and planning
Key Takeaways
- CRI allows health systems to identify clinicians at risk of resigning before it occurs
- Atalan made retention initiatives measurable and communicable, enabling leaders to validate what works and share results transparently with clinicians
- Objective data captures “silent sufferers” missed by traditional surveys
- Results show statistically significant reductions in predicted and actual resignation rates
- Scaling the platform provides measurable financial, operational, and strategic benefits
Clinician resignation is costly. Recruitment and turnover disrupt care and drain resources. This health system’s experience demonstrates how Atalan can inform, measure, validate, and amplify the impact of retention initiatives – making it possible to prove progress, protect revenue, and sustain stability.