Physician recruitment and retention is essential for a hospital or health system to meet its community's healthcare needs. Medical staff plans assist these organizations in their recruitment/retention efforts by:
- Determining the need for primary care and specialist physicians in the community.
- Managing the number and types of physicians on the hospital's medical staff.
- Recognizing opportunities to grow and develop new services.
- Helping to protect the organization's tax-exempt status. (The Internal Revenue Service requires that nonprofit, tax exempt hospitals demonstrate that expenditures to recruit physicians and acquire physician practices further their charitable missions.)
- Helping maintain Medicare eligibility. A hospital/health system must ensure that any financial support for recruiting physicians complies with Medicare anti-kickback laws.
Included in our medical staff development planning process are the following steps:
Service Area Determination - We will use patient origin data to confirm the hospital's service area.
Physician Roster Development - Using the hospital's medical staff roster, competitor medical staff rosters and other databases, we will compile an up-to-date roster of all active physicians in the service area.
Demographic Analysis - We will determine general population characteristics of your hospital's service area and identify any unique characteristics that may influence the need for certain physician specialties.
Community Need Calculation - We will calculate surpluses and deficits by medical specialty using physician-to-population ratios, including consideration of attrition and market share adjustments.
Medical Staff Analyses - We will interview and survey the medical staff to determine the physician perspective as it relates to medical staff development and recruitment needs. Additionally, we will analyze the contribution and loyalty of medical staff members. This will include a discussion of age, attrition, and strongholds/shortcomings of the medical staff.
Recommendations - The results of the above listed steps will be amalgamated to develop specific recommendations based on updated findings of medical staff and community need analyses.
In our medical staff planning process, we emphasize the importance of stakeholder participation. It is not enough, in our opinion, simply to quantify the surpluses and deficits of physicians. We solicit input from administration, medical staff, community leaders, and other stakeholders to ensure that our findings not only reflect the "numbers" but also the community's and hospital/health system's unique needs.
The deliverable is a written report and a presentation to the hospital administration, board, and/or medical staff outlining the physician needs in the community and on the medical staff, as well as our recommendations related to those needs.