An ED physician burnout program that goes beyond the EAP.
For Medical Directors and CMOs at emergency departments and ER staffing groups: a confidential clinical channel built for emergency medicine, with shift-fit scheduling, crisis access, and clinicians who understand the floor.
via telehealth
licensed clinicians
and 3 hours
out-of-network
A confidential clinical channel for the emergency medicine workforce.
This page is for Medical Directors, CMOs, and well-being leads at hospital emergency departments and emergency physician staffing groups who are building a burnout intervention that goes deeper than the EAP. If that is you, the rest of this page is the briefing document.
CEREVITY operates as a clinical network with direct relationships between the network, the clinicians, and the contracting group. There is no third-party broker layer. Physicians are matched, not first-served. Scheduling and intake run through CEREVITY infrastructure, built to fit a shift-based life. Care is private-pay, out-of-network, and structurally outside the employer-sponsored benefits stack by design.
Our clinicians are independent licensed professionals, and many have treated emergency physicians before. They understand circadian disruption, the volume of trauma exposure, and the reasons an emergency physician will not engage with a channel that operates on a nine-to-five assumption. CEREVITY exists because the EAP was scoped for the general workforce, and the highest-burnout specialty in medicine needs something built differently.
Emergency medicine is the highest-burnout specialty in medicine, and the EAP was not built for it.
The reasons your physicians do not use the EAP are not failures of the program. They are inherent to how it was scoped, and to a specialty whose schedule and trauma load look nothing like the workforce the EAP was designed around.
Emergency physicians present with a recognizable clinical profile: cumulative trauma exposure, circadian disruption from rotating shifts, moral injury from boarding and resource constraints, and the specific depletion of high-acuity decision-making under crowding. These are not workforce-wide concerns the EAP roster was built to address.
The barrier is also structural in the most literal sense: an EAP that books weekday daytime appointments is unusable to a physician working nights and rotating shifts. A burnout intervention that does not fit the schedule is not an intervention. CEREVITY is built around shift-fit scheduling and a crisis-access pathway, because a channel an emergency physician cannot actually reach when they need it is no channel at all.
What changes when the channel is built around this profile: clinicians with experience treating emergency physicians, session formats long enough to do depth work, scheduling that fits nights and rotating shifts, a defined crisis-access pathway, and a confidentiality posture that gives the employer no visibility into who has engaged or with what.
What CEREVITY clinicians actually treat in the ED.
The clinical scope is built around the presenting profile of emergency physicians, not the workforce-wide profile an EAP is built for.
Cumulative trauma exposure
The deaths, the codes, the cases that do not leave. Trauma exposure in the ED is not a single event but an accumulation, and it has a clinical signature that builds quietly over a career.
Moral injury and boarding
Being responsible for patients you cannot move, treat, or discharge because the system is full produces moral injury distinct from burnout. It is one of the defining clinical pressures of modern emergency medicine.
Circadian disruption
Rotating and night shifts disrupt sleep, mood, and recovery in ways that compound over years. The downstream effects on mental health are real and treatable, and rarely addressed directly.
Acute decision depletion
High-acuity decisions made continuously under crowding deplete a finite resource. Eventually the cost shows up, in the work and outside it.
Workplace violence and aftermath
Verbal abuse and physical assault are routine in many EDs. The psychological aftermath is treated as part of the job when it should be treated clinically.
Adverse outcomes and litigation
A bad outcome or a malpractice claim carries an aftermath that ED culture rarely makes room for. The second-victim pattern and litigation stress are both treatable.
Compassion fatigue and depersonalization
The emotional flattening that protects a physician through a shift becomes its own problem when it does not switch off. Depersonalization is a core dimension of burnout, and a treatable one.
Substance use as a coping pattern
Alcohol and other substances often enter as a way to come down from shift intensity and reset sleep. CEREVITY treats this as a clinical issue early, and refers to the appropriate monitoring channel where impairment-level concerns arise.
Three session formats, each chosen for the work.
Most EAPs offer one session length on a weekday schedule. CEREVITY offers three formats on a schedule built for shift work, because different kinds of clinical work need different amounts of time. The choice is made between the clinician and the physician.
The steady cadence of ongoing therapy. Most clients spend most of their care in this format.
For work that needs more room than a standard hour. Focused work on a specific transition or decision.
For work that needs uninterrupted time to reach resolution within a single session rather than broken across weeks.
Because CEREVITY operates outside the insurance reimbursement model, session length is set by the clinical work, not by what a payor will reimburse. That is the structural reason all three formats, the 50-minute, the 90-minute, and the 3-hour, can exist on the same network.
Ready to scope an ED burnout briefing?
Briefings are scoped to your department or group. We respond personally within 48 business hours with proposed times and any prepared materials, including how shift-fit scheduling and crisis access are structured.
Request a briefingHow a physician gets matched, in five steps.
Matched, not first-served. Here is the process that produces the match for an emergency physician.
The eligible individual submits a confidential intake form covering presenting issues, modality preference, professional context, and scheduling parameters. The form is operated by CEREVITY, not by a broker.
Intake is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership against the network's active capacity, current licensure footprint, and modality availability. This is the step that does not exist in an EAP.
A specific clinician in the network is matched to the physician based on the review. The physician receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
The physician schedules directly through CEREVITY infrastructure. No phone handoff. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of the match.
Care continues with the matched clinician on the cadence the clinical work requires, in 50-minute, 90-minute, or 3-hour sessions, without an employer-imposed cap.
Capability comparison for Emergency Department Physicians.
A vendor evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when scoping a leadership-tier offering for physicians. Both models have a place. They are designed for different populations.
| Dimension | Typical EAP | Executive-tier point solution | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between group and roster of contractors; scales well to workforce-wide coverage | Single-vendor platform with W-2 or contracted clinician pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships, no broker layer |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability; optimized for speed-to-first-session | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review of intake by network leadership against active capacity |
| Intake and scheduling | Phone handoff to clinician's line; verbal scheduling on callback | App-based intake; in-app scheduling | Network-operated intake; direct online scheduling, no phone handoff |
| Session formats | Standard 50-minute; capped session counts per issue | Standard 45 to 50-minute sessions | 50-minute, 90-minute, and 3-hour formats; no employer-imposed cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable workforce concerns; intentionally generalist | Workforce-wide therapy and coaching, with executive tier branded on top | Built around presenting issues specific to Emergency Department Physicians |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy; modality-agnostic roster | Generalist therapy; some specialty referral | CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic clinicians, matched to presenting issue and modality preference at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density; varies by region | National via telehealth, with roster density variation | Nationwide via telehealth across all 50 states |
| Payment model | Group-sponsored; covered through benefits plan | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private-pay; out-of-network; structured through partnership agreement |
| Group visibility | Aggregate utilization reporting; broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement and utilization metrics | Administrative reporting only; no clinical content visible |
| Where each model fits | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing care with executive add-on | Emergency Department Physicians, end-to-end |
What the group sees, and what the group does not.
For a physician-tier-tier mental health channel to function, the participating physician has to trust that engaging with it does not create group visibility into their care. CEREVITY is designed around that requirement.
- Confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals.
- Aggregate utilization at the partnership level, where contractually appropriate.
- Invoicing and eligibility reconciliation.
- Nothing tied to a specific named physician's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named physician has scheduled, attended, or engaged with care.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, diagnostic information, or progress data.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians in the network are independent licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. Protected health information is held within the clinical infrastructure and is not transmitted to the partner organization, and the agreements governing it are defined in writing before the partnership goes live.
Clinical records, session content, and individual engagement data sit inside the clinical platform and are not shared with the partner organization. The administrative layer is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed against the network side at the point of intake. Administering eligibility does not require the partner to receive clinical information back.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed where the partnership structure requires it. The partnership agreement defines the administrative reporting scope explicitly, in writing, before the partnership goes live.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a physician-tier-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first physician in care. Here is how CEREVITY runs that period.
A 60-minute kickoff with your team and CEREVITY's partnership lead. We confirm the partnership shape, the eligibility model, the administrative reporting scope, and the internal owner on your side. The Business Associate Agreement, where applicable, is executed in this window.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list in the format your administrative systems support. CEREVITY confirms it against the network side and establishes the verification path that runs at the point of intake. No clinical data flows backward; only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, physician-tier-appropriate internal comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. Your team adapts it to your voice. The communication is designed to be received without stigma.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of each intake. By day 30, the partnership is operational and your internal owner has a quarterly review cadence with the CEREVITY partnership lead.
The business case for the Medical Director and CMO.
Three axes a department or staffing group can defend in a budget conversation. The numbers will vary; the structural argument does not.
Physician retention is a per-departure problem in a thin market.
Emergency physician turnover is expensive and disruptive: locum coverage, recruiting, onboarding, and the load placed on remaining physicians who are already at the highest burnout rate in medicine. A clinical channel built for the realities of the specialty pays for itself across very few prevented departures.
Physician capacity drives throughput and safety.
A depleted emergency physician affects every patient on the board, every handoff, and every junior clinician on the shift. Burnout is associated with reduced quality and higher error risk. Recovery of clinical capacity flows directly into throughput and safety.
Recruiting and the well-being signal.
Emergency physicians choosing between groups increasingly weigh well-being posture. A named, confidential, shift-fit mental health channel with crisis access is a differentiating signal in a competitive emergency medicine market.
Questions physicians and their teams ask first.
It means the scheduling and intake process is built for physicians working nights and rotating shifts, rather than assuming weekday daytime availability. Appointment windows and clinician availability are structured so a physician on a night rotation can actually get matched and stay in care. The specifics are scoped to your group's shift patterns at the briefing.
Yes. CEREVITY includes a defined pathway for urgent situations so a physician in acute distress is not left waiting for a routine appointment slot. The exact structure, including escalation and after-hours handling, is defined in the partnership agreement and explained to eligible physicians at onboarding. For life-threatening emergencies, standard emergency services remain the immediate channel.
No. Administrative reporting only. The employer receives confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals and aggregate utilization where contractually appropriate. The employer does not see whether a specific named physician has scheduled, attended, or engaged, what clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned. This is contractually scoped before the partnership goes live.
Clinicians in the CEREVITY network operate under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. The handling of any protected health information, and the specific agreements that govern it including any Business Associate Agreement, are defined in writing in the partnership agreement before the partnership goes live, scoped to your structure. Whether a given agreement applies is a legal determination made with your counsel.
No. CEREVITY is a structural complement to the EAP. Most groups keep the EAP in place for workforce-wide coverage and add CEREVITY as the physician-tier channel built for the schedule, trauma load, and confidentiality needs of emergency medicine specifically.
Clinicians in the CEREVITY network are bound by their licensure-specific mandatory reporting obligations, including duties around danger to self or others and suspected abuse. CEREVITY is not a reporting workaround and does not represent itself as one. Where impairment-level concerns arise that point toward a physician health program or board involvement, that remains the appropriate channel.
First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of intake, depending on modality requirements and scheduling parameters. The crisis-access pathway exists for situations that cannot wait.
Through a briefing call. Use the form below or email [email protected] directly. Briefings are scoped to your department or group; we respond personally within 48 business hours.
Tell us about your department or group. We respond within 48 business hours.
Briefings are scoped to your group. Share a few details below, including your shift structure and rough physician count, and we will respond personally with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the burnout channel you are evaluating.
The structural argument on this page is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians who have served on EAP panels, combined with widely-published industry estimates of EAP utilization and Emergency Department Physicians-specific data where cited. Specific contractual scopes, including the administrative reporting boundary and the BAA structure, are confirmed in writing in the partnership agreement before any partnership goes live.
