Director of Physician Executive Search Mark Dotson combined a Midwest-rooted strategy and fast, focused execution to help a small behavioral health clinic hire two physician leaders in under 100 days.
Evansville, Indiana, is a community of 100,000 nestled in a bend in the Ohio River where the states of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky come together. Unfortunately, it’s also at the convergence of the substance use epidemic, as both Indiana and Kentucky rank among the states with the highest rates of substance use and overdose deaths in the country.
Despite the urgent need for care, a mid-sized market in the lower Midwest is a difficult place to attract doctors specializing in addiction medicine. Recently, Director of Physician Executive Search Mark Dotson needed to find two of them: a Chief Medical Officer with a psychiatry background and a Medical Director of Addiction Medicine. The client, a behavioral health center providing outpatient addiction treatment, adolescent behavioral health, and community mental health services to four counties in the area, was a small facility without ties to a medical network, which added to the difficulty of the assignment.
The search was beginning to sound like finding a needle in a snow-covered haystack. Yet Mark was undeterred, even when wintry weather postponed his first onsite visit in January. When Mark arrived a few weeks later, the organization greeted him with a warm, welcoming atmosphere that melted away any reservations about filling the roles.
“I noticed immediately how collegial and open everyone was,” Mark fondly recalls the visit. “It felt like a big, working family.”
Additionally, both roles were flexible in definition and compensation, with a standard Monday-Friday workday. Mark also had ample time to source a candidate. The CMO wasn’t retiring until the end of the year, and they had just created the Medical Director role. While this relieved direct pressure, Mark is not one to waste time. He was eager to find the right physician leaders for the roles.
A Creative Sourcing Strategy Grounded in Midwest Connections
Mark’s recruitment strategy was to begin with outreach to addiction medicine fellowship programs across the country. He aimed to identify doctors with Midwest connections who might be looking for opportunities to move back home.
He quickly honed in on Dr. D, a recent addiction medicine fellowship graduate in San Antonio, for the Medical Director position. Not only did Dr. D have family ties to the Midwest, but he was passionate about addiction medicine. As an athlete, he saw how addiction can happen to anyone, to devastating effect. He also brought an uncommon attribute to the role, which was heavy on administrative management. Dr. D spent nearly 20 years in the business world helping with his family’s company before applying to medical school. Based on his business acumen, leadership experience, and medical knowledge, mentors from his fellowship recommended he consider a career as a medical director.
“Dr. D has an entrepreneurial spirit,” Mark explained. “He was the first fellow of his program, so he had the opportunity to create his own fellowship to a large degree. Plus, he had business-building experience from his pre-medicine days that would serve him well in defining the Medical Director position. He also had roots in Illinois and Ohio, so getting him to Evansville wasn’t a big stretch. It was like the town he grew up in.”
Within a few days of introducing Dr. D, leadership at the behavioral health clinic reached out to schedule an interview, which came together quickly. A week later, they presented him with an offer. In total, the search took less than 70 days.
“They were ready to find the right person. And he checked off the necessary boxes for everybody.”
Found: A CMO Seeking A Better Quality of Life
Meanwhile, Mark’s CMO search posed its own challenges. Not many candidates were psychiatrists seeking a leadership role at an outpatient-only facility in the Midwest. He turned to the several physician job boards and databases available to him, reaching out to potential matches directly. Eventually, a message sent on DocCafe uncovered a promising lead.
Dr. E, a psychiatrist, had spent the past several years in New York working at the VA, in a demanding, chiefly administrative role. He was a candidate Mark contacted early on in his outreach, so when he responded with interest in the role, Mark was pleasantly surprised.
When they first connected, Mark was concerned that the CMO job would be a step down in pay and prestige. As luck would have it, that was exactly what Dr. E and his wife were looking for. They wanted to improve their quality of life and move back to their home in Madisonville, KY, which was within commuting distance of Evansville.
A Fortuious Connection
While Dr. E initially had some reservations, they didn’t last long. It turns out that he had met the current CMO at a conference a few years prior and was able to connect with them to learn more about the facility and what the job was like.
“Once he connected those dots, he had a lot of trust in the organization and trust in the process,” Mark observed. Dr. E was also excited to spend up to half of his time seeing patients and tap into his teaching background as the leader of the facility’s residency program. Like most physicians, patient interactions are one of his favorite parts of practicing medicine. It was an aspect that he missed and hoped for most in his next role.
Within 100 days, Dr. E accepted his offer. “That’s still too long for me,” Mark quipped, knowing it more typically takes a year or more to place a CMO. After completing his addiction medicine fellowship boards, he will join the team in Evansville in October, with plenty of time to transition before the current CMO’s retirement.
Getting to Yes, Fast: Flexibility, Focus, Motivation, and Midwestern Hospitality
When asked how Mark turned this challenge into a triumph, he passed all the credit to the client and the candidates, who were all flexible and responsive.
Despite the anticipated challenges, both opportunities were attractive because each candidate could tailor the roles to their experience, goals, and interests. By narrowing the search to physicians with addiction medicine experience and connecting with fellowship programs, Mark could source candidates with optimal training and job history, while networking with people with deep connections in the field. Once strong leads were identified, both candidates and the client were forthcoming with their mutual interest and were willing to move quickly at each step of the process. “They didn’t sit on anything, and the candidates were all contacted within three days,” Mark added. “The organization loved how responsive the candidates were.”
Lastly, the physician leaders both had enjoyable visits, with excellent itineraries. They also both had connections to the community they were serving. “I was really trying to find somebody who’s lived in a place like Evansville, or a smaller community where Evansville may be a larger place,” Mark summarized his strategy. “It’s harder to get people who are in Indianapolis or the bigger cities out to a smaller city unless they have a reason to be there.”
“I’m impressed by the quality of candidates and how quickly you found them,” remarked the facility’s president and CEO as she thanked Mark for his help.
If your organization is facing a difficult physician executive search, the team at Jackson Physician Search has the expertise, access, and tools to assist effectively. Reach out today to learn more.
