The Hidden Cost of Oncology Staff Burnout, and How to Ease the Burden
Published by
Thyme Care
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Oncology Care Team Burnout: A Workforce Crisis in Slow Motion
Burnout among oncology staff isn’t just an emotional burden—it’s a growing operational, financial, and clinical risk that threatens the long-term sustainability of quality cancer care. According to a 2024 ASCO survey, 59% of oncology professionals report one or more symptoms of burnout. As the demands of cancer care intensify, this strain is eroding the sustainability of oncology teams across the country.
Most provider groups are doing everything they can to support their teams, but the reality is that long hours, emotional intensity, and growing administrative demands are pushing even the most dedicated oncology staff to the brink. And while burnout might be considered an internal issue, its hidden costs ripple outward— quietly eroding patient care experience and financial performance.
Why Oncology Staff Are Burning Out—Fast
The root causes of burnout in oncology are well-known but growing more acute:
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Administrative overload, including symptom assessments, SDOH support (transportation, food, and financial), appointment and referral navigation, patient education and support, visit follow-up, medication and treatment guidance, and more.
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Rising oncology patient volumes and increasing treatment complexity
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Emotional toll of providing life-altering diagnoses and managing end-of-life care.
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Pressure to meet quality metrics in a shifting value-based care landscape.
This is not about poor staffing or inefficient management. These are systemic challenges that require a smarter, more scalable way to support care teams. Burnout is a signal that your care team needs more support.
What Burnout Is Really Costing Provider Groups
While the emotional and human toll of staff burnout is clear, the operational and financial impacts often remain hidden until they become urgent:
Lower Productivity, Staff Attrition, and Turnover
When burned-out staff members operate in “survival mode,” clinical decision-making can become reactive. As bandwidth decreases, care quality and throughput are at risk of decline. The loss of experienced staff has downstream effects on care continuity, morale, and training burden on remaining team members.
A 2024 study found that 18% of oncologists considered leaving medicine due to the severity of burnout. At the same time, oncology nurses, navigators, and care coordinators are leaving the field at higher rates: the U.S. is projected to face a shortage of up to 450,000 oncology nurses by the end of 2025.
The financial stakes are high: the average cost of turnover for a single RN rose 8.6% this year, with some organizations incurring up to $72,700 per nurse. For hospitals already facing margin pressure, every 1% change in RN turnover can cost - or save - $289,000 annually. Between recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity, each departure chips away at both clinical stability and financial performance.
Limited Bandwidth Affects Clinical Excellence
When provider groups are stretched thin, the quality of care can begin to slip. Follow-ups are delayed, care coordination is inconsistent, and proactive support often falls through the cracks. Without enough time or staff, even the most capable provider groups can struggle to deliver the consistent, high-quality cancer care their patients deserve.
Poor Patient Experience and Outcomes
Patients feel the effects of provider and staff burnout too. Delayed callbacks, fragmented transitions of care, and missed touchpoints—especially between visits—can erode trust and satisfaction. And when patients don’t feel supported, they may look elsewhere.
There’s a Better Way—And You Don’t Have to Do It Alone
Oncologists have stated that things that may improve their work satisfaction were enhanced practice and administrative support (46%) and enhanced patient care support (44%). Oncology provider groups are already doing more than ever with fewer resources, and adding more staff isn’t always the answer. Hiring takes time and money—and doesn't always solve the underlying issue. Plus, any new roles can create overlap or confusion without the right structure.
Instead, provider groups need a partner that seamlessly integrates with their workflows to extend their team’s capacity and helps fill any gaps. That’s where Thyme Care comes in. We work in lockstep with provider groups, offering scalable support from our 24/7 oncology-trained Care Team. The goal isn’t to replace your team—it’s to relieve the burden. We take on time-intensive tasks that arise between oncology visits so your clinical team can focus on providing the best care possible.
Operational burden
Cancer care places a significant operational burden on provider groups, with staff frequently pulled away from direct clinical care to manage unmet social needs, coordination for appointments across specialties, and the ripple effects of avoidable emergency visits. Unmanaged symptoms and complications often lead patients to the emergency department—many times unnecessarily. Social determinants of health (SDOH), including transportation, housing insecurity, and financial toxicity, are deeply intertwined with the cancer journey, yet the lack of systematic SDOH data collection across oncology settings makes it difficult to proactively identify at-risk populations and intervene effectively. Plus, handoffs between multiple specialties (e.g. oncology, surgery, radiology, palliative care) can create coordination gaps, and oncology care teams are stretched thin, juggling both clinical and non-clinical tasks such as SDOH needs and psychosocial concerns.
This strain leads to staff burnout, reduced staff capacity, and costly breakdowns in care continuity. In a 2024 study, 18% of oncologists considered leaving medicine due to the severity of burnout. Traditional VBC models rarely account for these challenges, and if they do, may burden provider groups with even more to manage due to the lack of infrastructure to support true transformation in oncology.
Infrastructure gaps
Most value-based care programs were built with chronic conditions in mind—not specifically oncology. As a result, provider groups are often understaffed when it comes to oncology-trained care managers, oncology-specific population management platforms, symptom triage tools, or patient engagement strategies tailored to patients with cancer. Even within existing oncology value-based care models, the economic structure can make it challenging to fund the technology tools and interdisciplinary team needed to have impact.
Without the resourcing to support robust symptom management and oncology-specific transitions of care, patients default to emergency care and face high readmission risks—eroding both quality benchmarks and financial performance.
Here’s How Thyme Care Supports Your Workforce:
Thousands of Tasks Off Your Team’s Plate
Between symptom management, benefits navigation, and psychosocial support, providers are often fielding more than just clinical needs. Working with one oncology partner, from January to May 2025, Thyme Care’s Care Team completed over 7,000 tasks, leading to thousands of hours saved, to support member needs, enabling them to focus on complex clinical care. These are the small but important care touch points that take time, energy, and follow-through—and they’re often the first to fall through the cracks when staffing is tight.
2,000+ Proactive Patient Outreaches Per Month: Preventing Unnecessary ER Visits
Burnout thrives in reactive systems. That’s why we take a proactive approach. In the same partner mentioned above, Thyme Care completed 2,000+ patient outreaches each month—whether checking in after treatment, responding to a flagged symptom, or closing a referral loop. This consistent outreach model means fewer urgent escalations and more peace of mind for both patients and providers.
Round-the-Clock Support– Answering Patients in ~30 Seconds
Many provider groups don’t have the bandwidth to manage all patient needs in between visits, while patients may have questions around-the-clock. Across the same provider group within 5 months, our Care Team handled 1,129 inbound calls, with an average response time of just ~30 seconds. This immediate availability means fewer after-hours burdens on your in-clinic staff—and more timely support for your patients when they need it most.
Reducing Readmissions with Timely, Nurse-Led Outreach
The post-discharge period is one of the most vulnerable times in a patient’s journey—but timely follow-up can be a challenge. Many teams simply don’t have the bandwidth to proactively support patients after hospitalization, or worse, if the admission occurs outside their system, they may not even be aware of the discharge until a readmission occurs.
Thyme Care closes this gap by monitoring discharge events in real time and reaches out within 48 hours. As a result, 96% of members received timely nurse outreach post-discharge, contributing to a 20% relative risk reduction in readmissions—relieving pressure on providers while improving continuity of care.
Advance Care Planning for Better Patient Alignment
Advance care planning (ACP) is essential to aligning care with patient values, especially for those with advanced cancer. But for provider groups, these time-intensive conversations often fall to the bottom of the list amid packed schedules and growing administrative demands.
Thyme Care's oncology-trained nurses are skilled in facilitating these delicate discussions, helping to ensure they happen earlier and more often. 67% of members with advanced cancer completed ACP conversations with Thyme Care– preserving precious time and energy for the in-clinic team.
And importantly, your staff remains the primary decision-makers. We don’t interfere with treatment planning or clinical calls. Instead, we act as a trusted extension of your team—freeing up your team to do what they do best: care for patients..
The Results: Caring for Patients Starts with Caring for Your Staff
Staff feel more supported and less overwhelmed—leading to better retention and a more sustainable workforce. Patients, in turn, experience more timely, coordinated, and compassionate care, which strengthens trust and improves satisfaction. With Thyme Care as an extension of the team, provider groups are better positioned to participate confidently in value-based programs, meet performance metrics, and deliver the high-quality cancer care their communities rely on—without burning out the people behind it.
Your team shows up every day for patients facing cancer. But who’s showing up for your team? By easing their workload and offering wraparound patient support between visits, Thyme Care enables provider groups to reclaim their time, focus, and emotional energy. Staff feel more supported and less overwhelmed—leading to better retention and a more sustainable workforce. Patients, in turn, experience more timely, coordinated, and compassionate care, which strengthens trust and improves satisfaction.