In the pursuit of growth opportunities, high-level leaders at healthcare organizations often overlook one critical thing — workforce planning. In a recent blog post, my colleague Tara Osseck explored this critical disconnect between the C-suite and in-house recruitment. All too often, as the former develops a growth strategy for the organization, the latter is absent from the conversation altogether. In fact, they may be kept in the dark right up until the moment they are hit with a request to staff a new service line as soon as possible.
Tara made the case for why recruiters belong in the growth strategy conversation, and I agree completely. Like Tara, before joining Jackson Physician Search, I worked as an in-house recruiter for a large health system, so I understand the demands of the job. I also know that if in-house recruitment hopes to earn a seat at the table, we must show leadership exactly what we have to contribute.
The answer is data, and not just the stats on open requisitions. Recruiters hold in-depth market intelligence on the most important resource a healthcare organization has: physicians. And yet, leadership remains in the dark because the information lives with the people closest to the candidate market. Sometimes, the disconnect is such that recruiters don’t even realize the wealth of knowledge they hold. So, here is the data that in-house recruitment likely has that can make the difference for your organization’s strategic plan.
Time-to-Recruit
On paper, it might make sense to start a new service line or open a new clinic. However, when leadership sets a strategy that requires hiring, for example, 10 ENTs this year, and the market reality is that placing even a few would be a win, that strategy is set to fail. Growth plans are often driven by community needs assessments and revenue targets, not by an understanding of how long a search actually takes. Recruitment cycles have their own timelines, and they don’t bend to a fiscal year.
The Association for the Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR) publishes annual benchmarking research tracking days-to-fill by specialty, which can be enormously useful for setting realistic expectations about the length of a search. Most in-house recruiters also track their own time-to-fill, specific to their given market, but those spreadsheets are rarely seen outside of the department, so leadership remains in the dark.
The fix: recruitment must present internal time-to-fill data alongside industry benchmarks. Armed with this information, the C-suite understands time-to-recruit as a hard planning input, much like a construction schedule or raised capital. Data-based time-to-fill estimates must be built into the plan.
Specialty Demographics
Some specialties are quietly running out of physicians. In certain fields — again, ENT is a good example — a large share of practicing physicians are approaching retirement age while residency pipelines aren’t producing enough replacements. The specialty demographic data provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) helps quantify the broader pipeline, and it should inform which service lines you can realistically grow and how fiercely you’ll compete for candidates. Nationally, the AAMC projects a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, with roughly a quarter of the physician workforce already 65 or older.
Internal demographics are critical as well, and recruitment should have a pulse on how many physicians in each department are approaching retirement age. As Tara touched on in her piece, it’s not as simple as waiting for a physician to give notice. Jackson Physician Search retirement research suggests administrators prefer that retiring physicians provide one to three years’ notice, but physicians tend to think six months is ample time. While they likely plan their retirement long before they give notice, fears about being pushed out before they are fully ready keep them quiet.
Initiating a dialogue about retirement planning early in the process is key. Retention incentives and genuine succession planning can extend tenure, encourage earlier disclosure, and smooth the backfill, but only if you’re tracking retirement risk and not simply waiting to receive formal notice.
What Candidates Tell Recruiters That They’ll Never Tell You
Candidates often open up to recruiters in ways they never would in a formal interview. They not only share what they are looking for in their next employer, but also what went wrong with their last one. The details vary, but the themes are largely consistent: no seat at the table, lack of administrative support, poor communication, and compensation that has quietly stagnated.
Recruiters also hear about competitors. When a local organization makes a change that triggers a wave of discontent, recruiters know, and can proactively tap that candidate pool before those physicians ever post a CV. Because recruiter relationships build and compound over time, former candidates may reach out years later with candid intel about what’s really happening inside organizations across your market. A well-connected recruiter can even flag an internal candidate who may be ready for advancement before you post that new medical director role externally, potentially saving you from a lengthy search.
Recruiters Can’t Contribute to a Strategy They’ve Never Seen
None of this intelligence is helpful if physician recruitment leadership is excluded from planning, and far too often, it is. Physician recruitment should be looped in on growth plans as well as operational changes — outsourcing, consolidation, etc. — so they can manage candidate messaging proactively. This is also true for community needs assessments. Operations and the C-suite may commission that analysis of population growth, catchment areas, and specialty gaps, but how much of that information filters down to recruitment varies widely. The information should flow both ways if there is any hope of aligning the physicians the community needs with the physicians who are realistically available.
Where a Search Partner Fills the Gaps
In-house recruiters bring deep local market knowledge, long-standing relationships, and internal data. However, they may have less access to national benchmarking, which is where a trusted national search partner can fill in the gaps.
Even the gold standard national physician compensation survey from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) runs roughly a year behind, and for high-demand specialties, what it actually takes to close a candidate today may already differ from the published figures for the year prior. A national search partner sees offers accepted and rejected in real time, across markets. This provides present-day insight about emerging package elements worth watching, like educational stipends, retention bonuses, and evolving loan repayment structures. Layering that intelligence on top of your internal data gives leadership the full picture.
Involve the Data Early
Tara’s point in the aforementioned blog post bears repeating: the discovery conversation has to happen before the strategy is set, not after. If you’re a leader, ask your recruiting team for workforce data alongside the financial model: time-to-fill by specialty, supply risk, competitive intelligence, and retirement exposure. If you’re an in-house recruiter, bring that data forward in the language leadership uses: execution risk and revenue exposure, not requisition counts.
The most successful organizations plan their growth around what the data actually says is possible. Data that in-house recruitment holds. This intelligence is the secret weapon in a healthcare organization’s strategic planning process, but first, it has to make it to the boardroom.
Whether you’re planning for growth or preparing for the retirements and departures already on your horizon, the team at Jackson Physician Search has the market intelligence and expertise to help you build and execute your strategy. Reach out to learn more about the benefits of a partnership.
