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Top 10 Reasons Medical Staff Plans Don’t Deliver Results

1. Applying too aggressive estimates – There are a lot of different models, use moderate estimates.
2. Failure to account for local variation – Regardless of the model used, you need to take into account what is happening in your market. If it takes 2 months for new patients to see an IM, then you need more IMs even if the model says you don’t.
3. Ignoring medical staff concerns – Physicians will always fight any recruitment that impacts their wallets. Start the dialogue early and often. Bring data.
4. Thinking that external recruitment is the only answer – Be creative in candidate sourcing. Do you have a military hospital nearby? Have you leveraged your existing contacts?
5. Retention efforts are non-existent - As in any staffing issue, retaining an employee is much more cost and time efficient than recruiting a new one.
6. Failure to recruit from competition - These docs are already part of your community and you know much more about them than you would an outside candidate
7. Forgetting about service and operational excellence – Patients won’t be happy if clinical staff is uncaring or if they have to endure crowded waiting rooms. If their patients aren’t happy, doctors aren’t happy. Doctors will gravitate to the hospital that keeps their patients content.
8. Loose connection between organization’s strategic plan, financial realities, and MSD Plan – The MSD Plan needs to reflect the organization’s strategic direction. No sense in spending too much effort on recruiting ENTs if the hospital wants to build its orthopedics and sports medicine services. This leads to the next mistake:
9. Misalignment between priorities and resource allocation – A candidate presents as a pediatrician who plans on moving to town. Your plan shows a need for a pediatrician, but it is a low priority. How much time, energy, and expense do you use to recruit this pediatrician? Often, a disproportionate share of your resources is spent on recruiting a physician who (1) already wants to move to your areas, (2) already wants to practice at your facility, and most importantly, (3) who will bring you minimal return on your investment.
10. Inadequately measuring the recruitment and retention process - How are you measuring your recruitment process? Gone are the days when results were measured by number of new physicians. In physician recruitment, management scrutinizes ROI by looking at items such as cost per hire, time to hire and site visits per hire, to name a few. This data and the standard it may be judged against are vital criteria in establishing the recruitment department's value to the organization.

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