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Strategies for Securing Physician Talent

 |  By John Commins  
   October 04, 2012

In our annual Industry Survey, only 10% of CEOs described their organization's physician recruitment and retention efforts as very strong and just 38% characterized it as strong. Another 19% rated it as weak or very weak. What trends are you seeing, and what are the actionable strategies to achieving an exceptional physician recruitment and retention program?

William Riley, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Memorial Hermann Sugarland, Texas

My hospital is the smallest of nine acute care hospitals in our system. Each hospital recruits physicians and physician groups based on the dynamics of their individual market. The primary strategy in the system is clinical integration, not individual physician recruitment. We have around 2,600 physicians in our clinical integration model, which brings a lot of leverage to bear in today's healthcare world and unites a lot more doctors in a major urban area than if you were strictly following in a pure recruiting and employing model..

The system has offered a menu of options for doctors. If they want to be employed, they certainly can be. It is fair to say that that is an increasing trend. But once again, it is not as steep a trend in terms of growth in our system as it is in other systems in the country.

When you have the infrastructure that we already have in our system, it plays to the physicians' basic desires to retain a small or solo practice, or even a large group practice, but at the same time have some of the benefits of being aligned with a big hospital system.

J.G. Schaaf, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Shenandoah (Iowa) Medical Center

Our recruiting is fair to good. It is variable depending upon the time and the need. There has to be a commitment by medical staff to be really actively involved in that since we are a small rural hospital. We are starting earlier and earlier. Recently I did a tour for a young lady who is about to enter medical school. She has a family connection to our community and happened to be in town.

We've had actually some luck with seeing young people. Sometimes an early start is well worthwhile. Involve these people with the institution. Give them a commitment. Make them feel welcomed and they feel kind of like, "Gee, that is a place that really wants me and I want to work there."

By the time they are in their residency a lot of people have already made up their mind where they are going to go when they finish their specialty training. If we can get to some of these people earlier, we can hopefully present to them some good reasons why they might consider us when as a general rule we wouldn't otherwise be on the radar.

Bob Kahn
CEO
Orthopedic Specialists of Texarkana, PLLC, Texas


We are not recruiting. We're a seven-physician independent practice. We plan to remain independent as long as possible. We make all of our money off of direct patient care so we have sold off all of our ancillaries. The youngest member of the group is 42. At this point we don't see any benefit to recruiting, especially if we have to pay $400,000 to $500,000 for some guy who is either right out of school or near the end of his practice.

Everybody who has come into this practice has asked to come in. There are 10 orthopedic surgeons left in Texarkana. All of the people within our practice are from the area and this is very profitable practice. I'm not sure the hospitals in the area would be in a position to purchase us because the incomes of all of the physicians in the group are well within the 90th percentile. The kind of money they would have to pay and the guarantees they would have to give us would probably cause regulators to look a little suspiciously. We have the W2s to prove it.

As long as my doctors continue to see patients and remain healthy or unless something significant happens with reimbursement we pretty much can do what we want for as long as we want.

Benjamin D. Anderson, MBA
CEO
Ashland (Kan.) Health Center

On finding a strategy that fits:
Our organization has a wonderful physician recruitment and retention plan. Our board progressively approved a plan to give all of our physicians eight weeks of paid time off that many choose to use for international mission work. Coinciding with that, we are building a culture in this organization that focuses on domestic and international service, not just among medical providers but with all of our staff. That has been attractive particularly for the millennial generation of physicians.

On the melding of missions:
Before we could recruit mission-focused physicians we had to be a mission-focused organization. Our board went through a comprehensive strategic planning process where it redefined the organization's mission, its vision, its core values, and its goals. We were able to recruit physicians whose personal mission matched the mission of our organization, which has been effective.

On the return on investment:
We are taking their vacation time, sick time, personal time, and CME time and wrapping it into one eight-week policy. We aren't giving them excess time off. We are just giving them control over the time off they do have. The additional cost is not significant, especially when you compare it with the locums' coverage costs; we were paying to get coverage that was not as consistent. When we took a look at the total cost of coverage we are actually paying less than we were before we had these providers because we were paying locums' rates. We just can't afford not to do this.

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John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

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