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Guide to Developing a Strategic Physician Recruitment Plan

Jackson Physician Search
October 30, 2018

This is Part 1 of our complete Guide to Physician Recruitment. With any process, it is best to start by assessing your unique needs and developing your strategy. This handbook helps you do just that with step by step instructions for developing a strategic physician recruitment plan. Download Part 1 of our Guide to Physician Recruitment. This PDF handbook defines six key steps on your path to building a strategic physician recruitment plan.

Physician Recruiting Process_Part1-FINAL

Developing a Strategic Physician Recruitment Plan: Part 1

The physician shortage continues to be a growing concern for hospital CEOs and executives and consistently ranks in the top 5 concerns along with financial challenges and governmental mandates. You can download a study about the physician shortage from the American College of Healthcare Executives.

To combat physician shortage, it is critical to develop a strategic recruitment plan. Recruiting top physicians can be an expensive and time-consuming process for hospitals and health systems, which is even more reason to do it efficiently. This guide is a support tool for our clients as well as those hospitals who are still exploring their strategy for physician recruitment.

Our four decades of experience in partnering with hospitals and healthcare organizations across the country to develop strategic recruitment plans helps us have a unique perspective and wide knowledge base, which we are eager to share here.

From the hospital CEO to the physician recruiter, this broad-spectrum guide offers you a clear path toward optimizing your efforts and your investment in physician recruitment. And, if you find you need additional assistance at any point, we are available for an in-person consultation. Contact us.

Top 5 Indicators You Need a Strategic Physician Recruiting Plan

  1. Lost Revenue – Each day you are recruiting is thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Hiring more quickly will benefit your hospital’s bottom line as well as productivity, morale, and patient loyalty.
  2. Recruitment Time – According to a recent report from ASPR, the average placement time for physicians is between 109 and 128 days.
  3. Losing New Patient Opportunities – If you are having to turn away patients because you don’t have the capacity to see them, then your recruitment needs are critical.
  4. Left Scrambling – Few hospitals and healthcare groups have physicians in the queue ready to start. If you need to backfill a position, you are most likely experience patient rejection and lost revenue.
  5. Competition – Competition with another facility creates the urgent and essential need for strategy and effective marketing of your open positions.

Defining a Strategic Physician Recruitment Plan

A strategic recruitment plan is simply a roadmap to assess, create, and launch effective recruitment for your physicians and other providers. Whether the CEO or the physician recruiter, you and your team need to be able to critically evaluate the needs of your system and obtain buy-in from key stakeholders and decision makers to develop and execute an optimal recruitment strategy that benefits your whole organization. A strategic recruitment plan is part of a well-designed medical staff development plan that encompasses:

  • Physician Alignment
  • A Community Needs Assessment
  • Population Analysis
  • A Five-Year Strategic Plan
  • Input From Key Stakeholders
  • Metrics and Benchmarks to Analyze Effectiveness

How to Add Strategy to Your Recruiting Plan

Being strategic in your recruiting helps save your organization time and money while ensuring you find the right physicians and advanced practice professionals to grow your business. It took an average of 128 days to fill positions across all specialties in 2016, according to the 2016 Association of Staff Physician Recruiters report. An internist, for example, brings in an average revenue of &823,900 for a facility each year, Jackson Physician Search found in its annual Physician Salary Calculator. That adds up to nearly half a million dollars in lost revenue for your hospital while you’re looking for a new hire.

It’s increasingly important to not just recruit quickly but to recruit the right doctors. Estimated turnover costs are as much as $1 million per physician after factoring in recruitment, start-up and lost revenue costs. A solid recruitment plan will enable you to find the right doctors for the right positions at the right time.

Remember, there is no other resource in your hospital that will give you a greater return on investment than a physician. For that reason, we encourage you to recruit and retain these professionals carefully and strategically.

To read the rest of this guide, please click the download button.

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