LocumTenens.com Recruiter Survey Shows State of Physician Job Market

Physician Recruiters Rank Orthopedic Surgeons as Most-Difficult-to-Recruit Specialists

ALPHARETTA, GA, August14, 2007

Alpharetta, Ga., August 14, 2007—Orthopedic surgeons top the list of physicians who are hardest to recruit currently, according to physician recruiters responding to a recent online survey by LocumTenens.com. While 21% of respondents identified orthopedic surgery as the most competitive specialty, 12% said cardiologists were the most-difficult-to-recruit specialists and another 12% said neurologists were the most difficult to recruit. (For more information, visit http://www.locumtenens.com/ASPR-2007.)

“Physician recruiters’ jobs probably will become increasingly difficult within the next five years to 10 years, beginning in 2012 when the leading edge of the baby boom generation approaches age 65,” LocumTenens.com President David Roush said. “For example, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projects two-percent growth in the population of orthopedic surgeons in clinical practice between 2000 and 2020, while they project the U.S. population age 65 and older will grow by about 50 percent in a shorter span of years (between 2005 and 2020).” He noted that only 72 out of 601 orthopedic surgeons who completed training in the United States in 2005 went directly into clinical practice.

In summer 2007 LocumTenens.com surveyed the more than 700 members of the association of Staff Physician Recruiters (ASPR) to identify trends and collect best practices in physician recruiting among U.S. healthcare organizations.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of respondents said their organizations hired more than 10 physicians in the past year, including 48% whose employers hired more than 20 physicians and 18% who hired more than 50 physicians. Forty-five percent (45%) of respondents recruit for healthcare organizations with more than 200 physicians on staff.

Physician/Recruiter Perceptions Differ

Almost half of respondents (48%) said the main reason physicians leave their facilities (other than death or retirement) was in search of different community attributes. Eighteen percent (18%) said physicians leave primarily for better compensation and benefits elsewhere, while 13% attributed physician departures mainly to family-related issues. More than a third of respondents (37%) said their employers had no physician retention plan in place, while 10% didn’t know.

Interestingly, among more than 2,500 physicians responding to a mid-2006 LocumTenens.com survey on physician retention, 36% said the prospect of higher compensation would influence them to make a job change, while 27% identified ‘a better work environment’ and 18% identified ‘a better community’ as a primary influencer.

Founded in 1995, LocumTenens.com is a full-service physician/CRNA recruiting firm specializing in anesthesiology jobs, cardiology jobs, psychiatry jobs, radiology jobs, surgery jobs and CRNA jobs with U.S. hospitals, medical groups and community health centers. LocumTenens.com is part of the Jackson Healthcare family of companies. To learn more, visit www.locumtenens.com/welcome.


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