Physician Recruitment Strategies Get More Personal

At Baystate Health, the largest system in western Massachusetts, marketers identify the greatest attribute the organization has to offer physicians and build a campaign around it employing consistency, automation, and tracking.

As the physician shortage worsens, competition among hospitals to attract the best doctors will only increase in coming years.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of more than 91,500 physicians by 2020—a number that is expected to grow to more than 130,600 by 2025. The shortage is equally distributed among primary care and medical specialties such as general surgery, cardiology, and oncology.

For hospital marketers tasked with physician retention and recruitment, now is the time to hone physician campaigns and strategies to ensure that they accurately portray an organization's best features.

Baystate Health, a four-hospital system based in Springfield, MA, began retooling its physician recruitment strategy in 2009 because leadership felt its current approach was fragmented, lacking consistent visuals and messaging. The health system partnered with ab+c Creative Intelligence, a Wilmington, DE, creative agency that launched missingphysician.com, a site created to help hospitals understand the true cost of not having a physician recruitment strategy.

Pam Snyder, Baystate's provider recruitment director, says three main strategies have drastically improved the health system's approaches physician recruitment: consistency, automation, and tracking.

"Having a standardized look and verbiage is essential to any marketing efforts that cross multiple forms of media, and it rings true in provider recruitment as well," she says. "The standardized verbiage helps my staff focus on the really great things about Baystate that providers want to know."

Value Proposition = Personal Appeal
The look and messaging was crafted based on what marketers and ab+c strategists identified as Baystate's employment value proposition: its personal appeal to physicians. This is the single most important thing a hospital can do when trying to improve their recruitment strategy, says Shawn Kessler, senior strategist for ab+c.

"Why would a physician want to join them rather than the hospital down the street? What is there unique employment value proposition?" he says. "Once [these answers are] identified it becomes much easier to promote the genuine organization and to recruit the right physicians that will love where they work and want to stick around for the long term."

For Baystate, the largest system in western Massachusetts, marketers determined the greatest attribute it has to offer physicians is an opportunity to find their niche. "If a physician is looking for an academic opportunity Baystate probably has one available," Kessler says. "If they are looking for a rural, outpatient only setting, they have that as well."

With this in mind, marketers crafted an integrated campaign using direct mail, email, journal ads, web postings, and website elements."

The driving force getting physicians on the website was the correctly identified value proposition, Kessler says.

With the new messaging ironed out, Baystate and ab+c worked to increase automation, meaning the health system makes fewer cold calls, works mainly from emails received from interested providers.

"This is a much better usage of our time," Snyder says. "The candidates we screen are truly interested in the position."

In 2013, Baystate also added a portal for outside agencies to register, effectively streamlining the number of cold calls and emails they receive. Prior to the portal it would not be unusual for us to receive up to 25 calls and emails a day from recruitment companies attempting to gain their business, Snyder says.

Finally, Baystate can now more easily track its advertising dollars for optimal ROI through the placement of personalized URLS (PURLs) that allow them to track external postings from the source back to their website. "This is an extremely helpful tool when managing advertising dollars," Snyder says.

Thanks to these three strategies, Baystate has improved its marketing efforts and its overall recruitment style, she says.

Results
In 2013, the organization recruited 111 providers (physicians and advanced practitioners), which was a record for the organization. It also achieved its lowest vacancy rate in seven years. Snyder attributes much of this success to the new recruitment website.

In 2014, Baystate plans to move its physician recruitment further forward by launching a branding campaign that will reflect the diverse work settings at Baystate whether at its 700+ bed, level 1 Trauma center or in one of its smaller community hospitals, Snyder says.

"In tandem, we plan to re-launch our website to make it more personal for each candidate that enters," she says. "We are also redefining our strategy and re-aligning our staff with distinct service line support for all providers including advanced practitioners."