Definitive Healthcare recently produced a report on addressing the healthcare staffing shortage. It is a sweeping report that touches on all aspects of healthcare staffing and the drivers of today’s shortages including aging patient population and burnout experienced by providers. While the impact of staffing shortages on healthcare is significant, I do want to address the factor that will further affect healthcare organizations in the near future: our aging physician population.
In the physician space, many specialties including psychiatry, surgery and internal medicine, have an average age of 50 years old or higher. Therefore, many medical staffs have active member practicing well into their 60s. A practice administrator once told me, “Physicians don’t plan their retirement. They just show up one day and say they are going to stop practicing at the end of the month.” I’m sure many of you have experienced this and it is important to not be caught by unexpected retirements in key physician specialties such as primary care or surgery. In many small to mid-sized hospitals, a couple of unexpected retirements could result in a domino effect of additional departures which would take years to correct.
As I tell many clients, when you begin a search, plan for the first day for that new physician to be a year from now and you probably have a pretty good estimate. Also, COVID has accelerated the use of telehealth which is great, but it limits the population of potential physician candidates to see patients in your community. My recommendation is to begin recruiting for those specialties well before you think you need to. We have clients actively interviewing and making offers to 2024 candidates so it is not too soon to start the process.
Also, I suggest changing your definition of a retention time frame for physicians. We harken back to the days when a physician would hang his shingle and practice in one community for 30 years, that’s not the norm anymore. In a pursuit to find those candidates, people focus on younger candidates. I say consider all qualified candidates. Many of of our experienced candidates want to practice for 3-5 more years while serving as mentors for your younger medical staff.
Better to have a few too many physicians in the short term then caught with too few for the long term.
