Author Archive for Nancy Burns, MBA
Nancy Burns, MBA, is the manager of industry research and publications for Cejka Search, a nationally recognized physician and executive search organization providing services exclusively to the healthcare industry for more than 25 years. In her role, she is responsible for managing media relations and marketing outreach to our healthcare association and industry partners. Prior to joining Cejka Search, Burns was group marketing manager for The Lancet and senior manager of global brand development for Elsevier, a leading science and healthcare publisher. Burns received her B.A. in international relations from Lehigh University and an MBA in marketing from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Physicians ready to retire? Flexible work options could be the fix
Despite findings from government think-tanks that that our nation appears to be emerging from economic woes, the fact remains that there are a great many physicians today who wanted to retire this year but didn’t because of economic and financial pressures.
According to a recently released 2008 Physician Retention Survey by Cejka Search and the AMGA, nearly two-thirds (62%) of survey respondents believe that physicians are delaying retirement due to the economy. How did organizations respond to the threat of their physicians’ retirement? Almost half (49%) of respondents said they find that part-time options are enabling physicians to delay retirement.
Medical groups are also generally willing to modify work schedules of pre-retirement physicians to encourage them to stay longer:
- 73% of respondents offer their pre-retirement physicians reduced hours
- 56% allow for no-call responsibility
- 20% allow for specialization with certain patient groups
“Physicians can’t retire now,” said Kathy Murray, senior director of recruitment partnerships of the physician search division of Cejka Search. Murray further explained that “increasing numbers of physicians who have retired are looking to get back into the workforce or to supplement their retirement income.”
How has your facility dealt with retiring physicians this year? What have you done for retention? Please share your tips below in the Comments section.
Small practice docs opt for hospital employment
Physicians from small groups are nearly four times more likely to become direct employees of a hospital, compared to physicians from other groups. Medical groups responding to the survey reported this trend in the 2008 Physician Retention Survey by Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association.
Why? In today’s marketplace, a confluence of economic trends, such as rising medical practice costs, social trends among physicians, and growing political pressure for healthcare reform contribute to another trend–physicians are increasingly seeking to make the move to hospital or large group practice employment.
Among those surveyed, physicians who left in the past 12 months to practice clinical medicine, opting to be a direct employee of a hospital included the following:
Don’t forget new media in your recruitment search
Congratulations, you have decided to hire another hospitalist to your team. Where do you start? Traditional networking still works. Place classified ads, and network with colleagues for insights on potential candidates. It’s a great start, but even better, go online. Interactive media has transformed the way job searches are conducted today.
Here are tips for how to put these tools to good use and find the perfect candidate:
- Ensure your print ad does double duty
Many general medical journals, medical associations, and healthcare recruiters place print ads on their Web sites at no extra charge. These sites often enable visitors to search by geography and specialty and offer alerts when a position matching a candidate’s criteria becomes available.
Happy spouse = Happy physician + recruitment success
Organizational “fit” and “family” considerations are the two most important forces in physician retention, according to results from the recent 2008 Physician Retention Survey from Cejka Search and the AMGA.
Fit—or how the physician adapts and thrives within the organizational culture—is essential (and the subject of another blog!).
The other consideration, family, is just as critical to a physician’s decision whether to leave a practice or not. The reason why half of all physicians leave is attributable to family: 18% of survey respondents leave the practice because the spouse’s job required relocation, and 32% relocated to be closer to family.
Down economy makes recruiting physicians from afar more difficult
It seems that everywhere you go these days you hear someone talking about the economy. The 2008 Physician Retention Survey by the American Medical Group Association and Cejka Search took a closer look at how the economy is affecting efforts to recruit physicians outside of the local community.
As a recruitment incentive, most medical groups (96%) stated they offer relocation assistance for their physicians. Medical groups most commonly cover expenses for a moving company (92%) and transportation (66%). Other assistance offered include realtor fees (10%), low-cost home loans (6%), and housing subsidies (4%).
Findings were mixed with regard to recruiting physicians outside of the local area and where relocation would be necessary. More than half (54%) of medical groups stated that the candidate’s ability to buy a home in their community had a positive effect on their recruitment efforts, while an almost equivalent percentage (53%) stated that the ability to sell their current home to relocate had a negative effect.
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Job (Dis)satisfaction factors
Medical groups are taking the time to better understand what factors cause job satisfaction—and dissatisfaction, as reported on the recent 2008 Physician Retention Survey by the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) and Cejka Search.
Among all survey respondents, 66% of the AMGA medical group members confirmed that they poll their physicians on job satisfaction levels; of those, 61% reported they conduct these satisfaction surveys on an annual basis.
