Rural Physician Recruiting Challenges and Solutions

Support During Covid-19 Today, support also entails providing physicians and other healthcare professionals with a safe environment, in which Covid-19 safety protocols are in place, where coronavirus vaccines are available and adequate personal protective equipment is in use. It also means adjusting the recruitment process to include online meetings, interviewing and communication. AMN Healthcare Physician Solutions continues to see instances in which the entire physician recruiting process in rural and other hospitals has been accomplished virtually. Support Rural physicians are by circumstances more professionally isolated than urban physicians and can feel they are on an island. Administration can show support by adding services through the use of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, locum tenens physicians, and telemedicine. Support also may range from areas like practice marketing to ensuring the physician’s wife and children have the community resources they need. When possible, it is particularly important to assist the spouse in finding employment opportunities, as many physicians today are married to professionals and may be reluctant to move to rural areas if there are no employment opportunities for the spouse.

Additional Rural Physician Recruiting Strategies Creating the most positive practice environment possible is one key to effective rural physician recruiting. However, there are other strategies rural healthcare facilities can employ to enhance their physician recruiting success. These include: A Sense of Urgency Smaller facilities can benefit by showing physician candidates that “they want it more” than other facilities candidates may be considering Unhampered by the bureaucratic decision making and process turnaround structures of larger organizations, rural facilities can be more nimble and responsive to candidate requests for information and decisions. In addition, by putting on a “full court press” during interviews they can show candidates that they are truly wanted in the community. The pro bono search effort that Merritt Hawkins conducted for the hospital in Weiser, Idaho provides one such example. During the physician interview, there were signs in shop windows welcoming the physician and his spouse, a float recognizing him in the homecoming parade, and the physician was introduced to the crowd at the half- time of the football game. Every effort was made to make the physician and his spouse feel welcomed, and by the end of the visit the physician was virtually obliged to accept the offer, which he did. Physician candidates are in short supply virtually everywhere, and rural facilities need to make it a priority to accommodate candidate schedules on interviews, be as competitive as possible on compensation, and be highly responsive and flexible during the recruiting process. A Knowledgeable Board There are instances where hospital or FQHC board members may not understand the need to be financially competitive or otherwise accommodating to physician candidates in the recruiting process. Data regarding the current physician recruiting market and current physician compensation levels can help educate board members to the realities of physician recruiting today. AMN Healthcare provided content to the Texas Healthcare Trustees’ (THT) Trustee Guidebook: Physicians and Medical Staff , an informational resource on the physician market for hospital trustees that outlines current physician recruiting challenges. We can provide the Guidebook, along with a number of surveys and white papers examining the current physician recruiting market, to rural facilities that need to educate their boards on these topics.

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