ST. LOUIS, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Projections of a looming U.S. physician shortage are expected to peak by the year 2020, with the shortage expected to range from 85,000 to 200,000. Numerous demographic and cultural changes in society and among physicians are likely to compound the shortage. Medical group practices seeking new recruits to work outside metropolitan areas already are feeling the impact, say Carol Westfall, president of Cejka Search, and Dr. Joseph Scopelliti, executive vice president of The Guthrie Clinic.
Westfall and Scopelliti told attendees at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Medical Group Association that the sooner they implement or expand strategic recruitment and retention models, the more effective they will be at ensuring adequate physician staffing in coming years.
Among data pointing to the growing physician shortage, Westfall and Scopelliti cited:
-- From 1980 until 2003, the number of new physicians graduating from U.S. medical schools remained stable at 15,000-16,000. During those years, the U.S. population increased by 24 percent. Also, of 836,000 U.S. physicians, 33 percent are over age 55. The demographic issues are further complicated as baby boomers have reached their 50s and many are approaching their 60s, when they are likely to need more medical care. -- The National Residency Matching Program reported last year that from 1997-2002, numbers of new physicians pursuing residencies in anesthesiology, radiology and dermatology increased 288 percent, 95 percent and 39 percent, respectively. Those pursuing family practice and general surgery declined by 40 percent and 28 percent, respectively. -- Data on choices by new medical graduates published in the September, 2003 issue of the Journal of American Medical Association point to the reasons for the shifting residency applicant pool: Given a choice between a “lifestyle-friendly” specialty and a “lucrative specialty,” 55 percent of graduating doctors choose the first option, while 9 percent choose the second.
“The fact that 50 percent of medical residents are women is sometimes cited by sources discussing ‘controllable lifestyle,’ as a top priority of medical students,” said Westfall. “We see the same factors driving decision- making among young male physicians as well, indicating that it is more of a generational issue than a gender issue. An often-overlooked point, however, is that group practices are increasingly responding by offering part-time work, flex-time and job-sharing arrangements to physicians. Some physician shortage models may not be incorporating realistic decreases in the average weekly hours that will be worked by physicians in five or 10 years.”
In addition to flexible work options, Westfall and Scopelliti discussed other increasingly popular physician recruitment tactics such as sign-on bonus packages, incentive programs, monthly stipends for early commitment (while doctors are completing residency programs), and increased compensation offers to candidates in the most-sought-after specialties.
“In its 2002 Medical Group Compensation and Production Survey, the AMGA found that radiology had the highest compensation increase from 2001 to 2002, 13 percent, while otolaryngology came in second at 12 percent,” said Westfall. Westfall also discussed the fact that in recent years many medical groups have addressed recruitment challenges by utilizing international medical graduates (IMGs).
“Flexibility and openness to diversity of personal characteristics are very important to recruitment success,” said Westfall. “The availability of IMGs has decreased somewhat, however, as a result of visa restrictions (of H1-B and J-1 visas) related to the war on terrorism. In some cases, though immigration attorneys can sometimes use detailed screening methods to assess whether international candidates can actually be viable for hire.”
Scopelliti outlined strategies that the Guthrie Clinic has used to address the challenging physician labor market. Guthrie is a multi-specialty group practice of more than 220 physicians headquartered in Sayre, Penn., with a regional office network spanning 23 communities in Pennsylvania and New York.
“We initiated a formal, centralized process for assessing the need for each requested new hire, no matter what the reason for the request,” said Scopelliti. “The recruitment process is also centralized and structure to include defined expectation of the position to be filled, training in behavioral interviewing for selection team members, and assurance of management-level commitment to fill each position.
“We also decided to initiate an outsourcing partnership with a national search firm that would provide us with an on-site recruiter to lead all recruitment initiatives, build and manage the candidate pool closely, and work as part of our management team,” said Scopelliti. “Since we began using Cejka Search in this role, we have become very selective about who we bring in for interviews and have decreased our interview-to-hire ratio from 11-1 to 2.4-to-2.7-1, representing an enormous cost savings for recruitment.”
For more information, to arrange interviews or to request bylined articles from Cejka Search, contact Gail Gardner at Adamson Public Relations, 314-727-9500, ggardner@adamson-inc.com.
Cejka Search is a nationally recognized executive and physician search organization providing services exclusively to the healthcare industry for more than 20 years. Partnering with organizations in pursuit of the nation’s best healthcare talent, Cejka Search completes assignments across all levels of the healthcare continuum. Cejka Search is a Cross Country Healthcare, Inc. company, a leading provider of healthcare staffing services in the United States.
For further information, contact: Gail Gardner, 314-727-9500, ggardner@adamson-inc.com, or Bill Wendt (Cejka Search), (314) 726-1603, (800) 678-7858, bwendt@cejkasearch.com Web site: http://www.cejkasearch.com/ Research Sources:
Since the mid-1980s, the Council on Graduate Medical Education had been forecasting a surplus of physicians, spurring a healthcare industry debate about whether identifiable lack of access to care among some demographic and geographic populations reflected a distribution problem or a supply problem. In November 2003, the COGME reversed its position to back a prediction of a physician shortage. The council adopted a report by Ed Salsberg, executive director of the Center for Workforce Studies at the State University of New York in Albany, in which Salsberg predicts a shortage of 85,000 physicians by 2020.
In the January 2002 issue of health policy journal Health Affairs, Richard Cooper et al published an assessment of the physician labor market based on macro-trends in physician supply and demand, including economic expansion, population growth, physicians’ work effort, and services provided by non- physician clinicians. The model projects a shortage of 200,000 physicians by 2020.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in September 2003 that women now make up 50 percent of the U.S. medical resident pool.
Cejka Search
CONTACT: Gail Gardner for Cejka Search, +1-314-727-9500,ggardner@adamson-inc.com, or Bill Wendt of Cejka Search, +1-314-726-1603,+1-800-678-7858, bwendt@cejkasearch.com
Web site: http://www.cejkasearch.com/
