You can’t escape physician turnover in the healthcare industry, and increasing demand for services combined with a nationwide shortage of physicians creates a challenging recruitment environment. If you don’t have a robust strategy for filling your talent pipeline and retaining them as long as possible, you’re setting yourself up for an understaffing situation.
The length of time a position is left open is time that you dedicate to filling a vacant physician position resulting in lost revenue. You can reduce the disruptions in patient care and your cash flow with a strategic physician recruitment plan.
This guide will provide insight into various physician recruitment strategies and steps for creating an effective plan that centers on finding the best talent. We will discuss best practices in identifying organizational goals and needs, recruiting the best physicians, and measuring success. With this guide as a resource, you’ll have the tools you need to make sure that your physician recruitment plan is successful.
Conduct a Physician Needs Analysis and Community Needs Assessment
A physician needs analysis is essential to any successful recruitment plan, as it allows access to the anticipated and current needs of your organization. This process expands your understanding and shows you the number of physicians and types of medical specialties that you need for your facility and organization. It also helps to comprehend the current market trends in physician recruitment and provides insight into areas where there may be appropriate talent. By conducting a thorough needs analysis, healthcare organizations can ensure that their physician recruitment strategies are targeted toward their specific needs.
A community needs assessment is also important to understand the population’s current and future healthcare needs. This data can provide key information on where there may be a gap in care, what types of medical specialties are in demand, as well as identifying underserved populations. This information can also help organizations identify physician recruitment strategies that will ensure they recruit individuals who are well-suited to serve their community’s specific needs and ultimately make sure they are adequately meeting those needs.
This will also allow you to remain in compliance with Stark regulations. You should conduct a CNA (Clinical Needs Assessment) every two to three years so you can adapt to your community’s changing physician needs over time. Surveys and live interviews with your physicians, facility administrators, residents, key employers, and facility board representatives provide useful insights for the CNA.
Facilities can offer incentives for physicians that are relocating their medical practice setting into their Geographic Service Area as long as they have objective and documented evidence indicating that the community needs that physician’s medical specialty. These incentives typically include a benefits package with competitive physician salaries, signing bonuses, paid time off, and other benefits. For example, the National Health Service Corps loan repayment program helps physicians pay off their medical school loans.
Remain Compliant With Stark Law
The Stark law stops healthcare facilities from competing with each other through buying referrals. When you’re recruiting physicians, you need to follow specific guidelines for the specialists you recruit and the incentive package you put together for them. Violations result in large penalties, so your priority is staying in compliance with this law.
Determine Organizational Goals and Needs
What are your facility’s goals and needs in the short and long term?
Determining the organization’s goals and needs includes identifying any gaps in care, desired medical specialties, targeted locations for recruitment efforts, and setting reasonable expectations for time frames of recruiting new physicians. This information will help organizations design an effective recruitment strategy that can meet their specific needs and ensure they are attracting quality physicians. This will also provide the basis for evaluating success of the overall strategy.
Here are a few areas you should keep in mind during this part of the hiring process.
Growth Plan
Are you in the process of expanding your facility? What are you adding to your current list of medical specialties and wings?
When developing a growth plan, it is important to consider not only the expanding number of physicians but also ensure that enough resources are allocated accordingly. Organizations should also have a clear understanding of their budget and what they can afford when it comes to recruiting physicians. Additionally, they need to consider other elements such as mentoring programs and development plans that will help attract top talent and support successful integration into the organization.
Patient Needs
Are your patient outcomes meeting your expectations?
Ensuring that desired patient outcomes are being met means having an in-depth understanding of the organization’s current performance, identifying areas for improvement, and setting expectations for how new physicians will impact patient care.
Organizations should evaluate existing performance data such as physician-to-population ratio, the level of difficulty to obtain physician referrals, and the call coverage that’s necessary for current physicians. They should also proactively develop strategies for monitoring and evaluating patient outcomes to ensure that physicians can meet goals and that desired results are being achieved.
With these measures in place, organizations can be confident that their recruited physicians are providing effective care that meets organizational standards while also helping to identify areas of growth or improvement.
Demand
Are you having issues with patient retention? Are they dissatisfied with the care they receive at your practice and they’re looking elsewhere?
Determine whether to hire new physicians or expand into different medical specialties by using data-driven metrics such as patient satisfaction rates and time analyses. This will ensure organizations meet their desired outcomes while maximizing efficiency and resource utilization.
It is important to consider the current and projected patient population and understand what particular medical specialty or service will be needed in the future. Organizations should also be mindful of any dynamic changes in patient demand that may require quick adaptations or changes to physician recruitment strategies to ensure maximum patient satisfaction and quality of care.
Succession Planning
Physicians leave healthcare organizations for many reasons. They may want to open a practice of their own in a different location, reach retirement age, want to change careers, or encounter burnout. You can’t predict when physicians might choose to leave, but you can plan and prepare to compensate for these unexpected scenarios.
Organizations should create succession plans for current physicians, taking into account retirement age and other factors across the workforce. It is crucial to monitor the average age of your physician pool so you don’t end up with many physicians retiring at once and no plan in place.
Creating a well-planned succession strategy that accounts for anticipated changes in demand and personnel can help sustain a high-quality workforce over time.
Turnover Rate
What’s the typical turnover rate among your physicians? How does it differ by medical specialty and department?
Analyzing the physician turnover rate is an essential element of any recruitment plan. This analysis can help develop strategies for creating a positive work environment, providing competitive physician salaries and benefits, and other attractive incentives that may reduce turnover.
The turnover rate can vary greatly depending on the medical specialty and department. Organizations should examine the turnover rate among their physicians to better understand how it varies across different roles, specialties, and departments. It is also important to understand the reasons behind departures such as a desire for higher salaries, a change of lifestyle, or other factors.
This analysis can reveal trends in physician satisfaction which could be addressed with changes to compensation, policies, or recruiting strategies.
Secure Organizational Approval
To implement a successful plan, you need buy-in from everyone involved in the physician recruitment process. The top administrators, recruitment team, physicians, and occasionally the C-suite should all be on board with your recruitment strategy.
Recruit and Hire Physicians Who Fit
You need more than a physician that seems like a good fit on paper. You need people who truly fit in with your healthcare organization’s culture and mission.
While it’s important to recruit physicians with the correct qualifications, communication skills, and personal traits, take the interview process one step further by ensuring that your organization and community meet their needs as well.
Identify resources and benefits that are unique to your organization such as competitive salaries, benefits packages, and welcoming work environments.
As potential physician candidates explore their options, these unique benefits that you have provided will ensure individuals that they will be receiving the necessary tools and support to become part of the team and provide exceptional care for patients.
Ultimately, this will give physician candidates the confidence to choose your practice.
Measure Your Success and Optimize the Physician Recruitment Process
Measuring your success in physician recruitment and optimizing the process is vital to ensure that the right people are brought into your organization.
Analyzing the results of your recruiting efforts can help you uncover any issues in the process and allow you to take immediate action to address them. Measuring success can also provide insights on how to improve the overall effectiveness of your recruitment strategy.
Utilizing this data can help optimize every step of the physician recruitment process, from candidate sourcing to interviewing and onboarding.
This will ensure that the organization is consistently recruiting top talent and building successful teams.
Here are a few metrics you should include in your reports:
- Time to fill positions
- Interviews to hire acceptance rate
- Patient satisfaction scores
- Physician retention over three and five years
- Physician satisfaction
- New and returning patients
The physician recruitment process isn’t an easy journey. Use this guide as the foundation for your physician recruitment efforts and fill your practice with the right people that you and the community need.
