Physician recruitment today
If you’re involved in physician recruitment today, you know the shortage
of physicians in many specialties is growing. This is true especially in rural
America, where roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population live but only 11
percent of U.S. physicians practice.
Recent studies indicate most U.S. hospitals (more than 90 percent) and a
majority of medical practices (almost three-fourths) across the country are
actively recruiting physicians. Experts project a shortage of 50,000 physicians
by 2010; it could grow to as many as 200,000 physicians by 2020.
As the competition for qualified physicians intensifies, physician recruitment
managers must work smart in attracting top-notch candidates.
How do we define “working smart”?
Basically, we mean using a variety of physician recruitment methods and tools.
However, we urge you to take full advantage of those available through the
Internet, since the Web enables physician recruiters to cover more ground with
greater speed and efficiency than any other one resource.
Take it from fellow physician recruiters
In late summer 2005, LocumTenens.com surveyed members of the Association of
Staff Physician Recruiters (ASPR, an organization of physician recruiters who
work for hospitals or medical groups, rather than for physician recruitment
firms) about physician recruiting practices. In one of the questions we asked
respondents to rate a list of physician recruitment techniques on a 5-point
scale from most (“1”) to least (“5”) effective. We
defined “most effective” as “those receiving the highest
combined percentages of “1” and “2” ratings. Based on
that definition, ASPR-member respondents ranked the following as the top five
most effective tools for physician recruiters:
1. Online physician job boards covering a broad range of
specialties
2. Networking through other healthcare facilities/associations
or local medical societies
3. Online specialty-specific job boards like GasWorks.com or
AuntMinnie.com
4. Physician recruitment firms
5. Journal advertising
Other tools, in descending order of effectiveness (as rated by our respondents)
included:
Broadcast E-mail
Direct mail to purchased lists/databases of physicians
Telemarketing to physician lists
Online healthcare job boards (those not for physicians
only)
Broad online recruiting sites like Monster.com and
CareerBuilder.com
The Internet and Physician Recruitment
The physician’s perspective
In a recent report on how physicians use the Internet in job-searching, the New
England Journal of Medicine’s (NEJM) market researchers focus on
the Internet as a complement to traditional physician
recruitment methods. While the physician-respondents in this study ranked
“networking and referrals” as the top tools they planned to use in
their next job search, about a third of them reported using the Web in their
current or most recent search.
Online job-searching offers instantaneous communication “24/7”
— a better fit for a physician’s hectic schedule than traditional
job-hunting methods. Topping the list of Web recruiting site advantages cited
by physicians in the NEJM study were interactive capabilities like individual,
online career counseling; Q & A bulletin boards and continuing education
resources; and “niche-focused” news articles.
The physician recruiter’s perspective
Physician recruiters generally list “networking” at the top of the
list of ‘best ways to find a job’ or ‘best ways to find
candidates.’ However, more than half of respondents to the
recruiting-tool-rating question in LocumTenens.com’s mid-2005 staff
physician recruiter survey rated online physician job boards more effective.
Also, note that 2 of the “top 5” are online resources.
These physician recruiters likely appreciate the tremendous volume of
physicians looking for career opportunities on the Web. [For example,
LocumTenens.com’s proprietary database stores information on roughly
40,000 physicians with whom we’ve been in contact. The licensing and
credentialing documentation (including the physician CV) on close to 3,000 of
those is stored electronically to facilitate client searches.]
Online tools available to physician recruiters today include:
Posting – Listing an available
position on an online job board or another Web site and waiting for responses
Sourcing – Entering candidate
requirements into an online physician database for individual follow-up
(Direct) E-mail “Blasting” –
Crafting a “call-to-action” message about a particular opportunity
to send simultaneously to a group of physician contacts you select by entering
criteria into an online database
All 3 of these tools are available at LocumTenens.com—including
RecruitRx™, our subscription-based, online,
candidate-sourcing and email-blasting tool.
Depending upon the type of subscription you purchase, RecruitRx™ allows
you to E-mail (individually) up to 500 physicians in one month, or to
“blast” E-mail up to 5,000 physicians per month (all physicians in
a certain specialty by state, for example).
Types of online resources to consider
Specialty society sites (those managed by
organizations like the American Society of Anesthesiologists or the American
Psychiatric Association)
Broader medical organization sites like
www.ama-assn.org
Recruiter trade association sites (those
managed by organizations like the ASPR or the National Association of Physician
Recruiters)
Healthcare trade media sites (e.g.,
www.LocumLife.com, New England Journal of Medicine—www.nejm.org)
Sites run by physician recruitment firms like
LocumTenens.com
General healthcare-related sites like
www.Medscape.com
List marketer sites
Healthcare market research firm sites
Medical school sites
Why hire a physician recruitment firm?
You probably can find the right physician for the job yourself, but can you do
it fast enough? Does your facility or group have the staff to handle all the
details of getting the physician or CRNA to your patients when needed? Sure,
you can handle the pressure, but do you really want to?
Most of the time, the decision boils down to time, resources and money.
Some healthcare organizations and medical groups hesitate to hire a physician
recruitment firm because of the perceived high cost involved. However, when you
consider the time involved in handling tasks like the following, the cost of
involving physician recruiters starts to look more reasonable.
To hire a physician you must have the time to:
Source candidates
Verify education, experience, certifications, etc., listed
on physician CV
Check references
Weed out unsuitable prospects
Facilitate licensing and credentialing
Secure or verify medical liability insurance coverage
Assist with travel arrangements and housing
If your facility or group has the time and resources to handle all of these
details in-house, GREAT! If not, spending the money to hire a physician
recruitment firm will expedite getting the right physician to your site.
Why Use a
LocumTenens.com Physician Recruiter?
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