BENCHMARKING PHYSICIAN RECRUITING
DEPARTMENTS
by Tammy D. Jamison, Physician Recruiter, Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, PA
ASPR Newsletter, VOL. 8, NO. 4, Winter 2001
How would you react if your boss came to you and said, “I would like you to conduct a benchmarking
study so that I can see how you and your department measure up in performance against your
colleagues across the country?” Would you react with joy? Probably not. With trepidation? Perhaps.
With curiosity? Probably. My first reaction was a throwback to adolescence with memories of
standardized tests with #2 pencils. I don’t think it is unnatural to experience a little angst when being
asked to compare yourself and your performance to others, regardless of the basis of comparison.
However, once the initial trepidation subsided, curiosity took over and I really wanted to know how my
performance and that of my department compared with other departments at hospitals across the country
that are responsible for recruiting physicians.
At my hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, we had been engaged in
benchmarking since 1996 as part of our ongoing Operations Improvement efforts. We contracted with
MECON-PEERx, an operation benchmarking database service that has data from over 500 subscribing
hospitals and a comprehensive analysis product. Through this initiative, we were provided with data from
“cohorts” or a comparison group of hospitals on clinical and non-clinical departments to gauge
productivity, cost performance, and cost position. The goal was to identify those hospitals and
departments that have costs per unit of service placing them in the lower 25 percent among similar
hospitals, and to learn from those organizations. However, there was no MECON data to extract and
analyze on physician recruiting departments when we decided to embark on a benchmarking study for inhouse physician recruiting departments, so we decided to create our own template. This became a more
arduous process than we had originally anticipated.
In order to develop a substantial list of participants to which we could compare ourselves, we used two
resources. We contacted a number of members of the Association of Staff Physician Recruiters (ASPR)
who worked at hospitals of similar size to ours. We were able to identify hospitals of similar size by
cross-referencing the ASPR directory with the American Hospital Association Guide. Recognizing that
not all in-house recruiters are members of ASPR, we enhanced the size of our study group by using an
in-house physician recruiter’s Internet chat room, which is supported by a website (Physicians
Employment on the Internet, www.physemp.com) on which in-house physician recruiters can list available
positions for physicians. Using this resource, we extended an open invitation to recruiters to participate in
our benchmarking study.
With the study group selected, we moved on to the next step. The most obvious indicator to compare is
the number of resolved searches in a given year. However, we learned that the way in which different
hospitals manage their recruitment processes blurred this somewhat basic concept for comparison. For
example, some recruiters use search firms, and some don’t. Some recruiters do in-depth, hour-long
screening interviews, and others ask a few pertinent questions of their candidates. Some recruiters just
source candidates while others narrow the field, schedule on-site visits, host candidates, and work with
families and relocations. Some recruiters have additional responsibilities within their organizations, such
as credentialing or conducting mid-level provider searches, that takes time away from physician
recruiting. Some recruiters have support staffs, and some don’t. All of these variables made it
challenging to establish a baseline to use for comparison.
We developed a list of questions that we believed were relevant to gather the information we needed to
start our study. However, after the first several conversations, we began to identify even more variables,
which forced us to refine and enhance our list of questions. What we asked of all the participants was:
1. What is the size of your hospital or network? (number of beds and hospitals)
2. How many in-house recruiters are in the department, and what are their responsibilities?
3. How many physicians did you recruit last fiscal or calendar year?
4. Of the number of physicians recruited, how many were hired with the assistance of a search firm?
5. How many physicians were recruited from your own hospital’s residency or fellowship programs?
6. Of the resolved searches, how many were for primary care physicians and how many were for
subspecialists?
7. How many of your recruited physicians were international medical school graduates?
8. Does your department support physician and non-physician executive searches for your hospital or
network?
9. What is your scope of responsibility within the search process, i.e., do you source, conduct in-depth
telephone interviews, schedule site visits, meet with candidates on visits, provide community tours,
work with spouses and families, assist with post-hire work such as finding temporary housing or
employment opportunities for spouses, etc.?
The reason we asked such a variety of questions was so that we could establish an accurate baseline for
comparing our department to others across the country. For example, there is no question that recruiting
a resident from your hospital’s own training program is much easier than recruiting a physician from
another part of the country. Using search firms is an effective method of locating candidates, and that
frees up the in-house recruiter’s time to focus on other aspects of the recruiting process. However, using
a search firm does increase the cost of recruiting a physician. Also, while being asked to recruit a family
physician to a rural community with a call schedule of 1:2 was a recipe for a migraine headache several
years ago. In today’s market with the increased number of family practice residency programs, the
available pool of family practice candidates is much larger and the competition for them much less
intense. Now my head starts to ache when I’m asked to recruit a fellowship-trained laparoscopic urologist
when I learn that only five fellows come out of training each year in North America! Also, we know it is
generally much easier to recruit an international medical school graduate than a physician who is
American schooled. All of these variables need to be factored in when making a comparison of in-house
physician recruiting departments.
We reached several conclusions through this benchmarking process. One is that benchmarking is not to
be feared, but rather embraced because it can provide at least three very valuable benefits. First, by
doing a benchmarking study, you have an incredible opportunity to learn from your recruiting colleagues –
there are many different ways to accomplish our shared goal of recruiting physicians. Second, a
benchmarking study is an effective way to measure your performance and can be used to demonstrate to
your boss how effective you are in performing your job, a job in which performance is sometimes hard to
quantify. Third, a benchmarking study can be used to validate your department’s existence. In these
times of increasing financial pressures in healthcare, every department that is not involved in direct
patient care may be asked at some time to substantiate the value the department adds to the hospital.
Recruiting departments are not revenue generating entities, and thus may come under scrutiny at budget
time. A progressive physician recruiting department should be well prepared to demonstrate the value it
adds to the organization it serves and the money it saves that organization by keeping the recruiting
function in house.
The most important conclusion we reached, however, is that benchmarking needs to be an ongoing
process. Trends within our industry are constantly changing, and those trends affect our ability to recruit.
Further, there are other parameters we didn’t include in our study that we believe will be important to
analyze in upcoming studies, such as average cost of a search, retention of recruited physicians, length
of a search, and the ratio of offers made to offers accepted. This is important data to compile and
analyze, and we hope our experience will inspire you to participate in a benchmarking study or to conduct
one yourself. The chart we designed to document our findings is included on the next page, and may be
helpful for you to use as a template for your benchmarking study. If you think this article is a call to
action…it is! 