Trends 2025: The future of physician hiring

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Heading into 2025, the physician shortage is no better than in past years and in fact, is continuing to worsen, according to Carey Goryl, CEO of the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR). 

Every year the time to fill positions has increased, Goryl said. Current physicians days to fill is 125 days for a primary care physician and up to 135 days for a specialist. Recruiting to a rural area is even more challenging since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic..

To license and credential a physician easily adds another 4-6 months on top of days to fill, she said. 

There is more reliance on advanced practitioners to work at the top of their licence as older physicians retire, Goryl said. 

Primary care and internal medicine are some of the most sought-after specialties, said Liz Mahan, director of Professional Development and Solutions at AAPPR. Also in demand are generalists, urologists and gerontologists, with demand depending on individual states.

The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment represents in-house physician and provider professionals. It is not a staffing agency.

The association recently released its 2024 AAPPR Internal Physician and Provider Recruitment Benchmarking Report highlighting search trends within recruiting and hiring in healthcare. It is based on industry data from recruitment professionals. 

In good news, the report found that for the first time in five years, the percentage of filled searches has increased.

WHY THIS MATTERS 

The report found that the number of active physician searches per year continues to increase. Advanced practice provider (APP) searches also continue to increase as the physician shortage grows, and make up more than half of all searches. 

Other findings:

• Family medicine continues to be the most common physician search (10% of all physician searches), and 81% of organizations searched for the specialty in 2023. Hospital medicine (9%), OB/GYN: general (6%) and internal medicine (5%) were the next most common searches.
• After decreasing in 2022, the percentage of offers accepted increased in 2023 for both physicians and APPs. On average, APPs accepted 71% of offers extended to them, and physicians accepted 83% of their offers.
• In 2023, the median time to hire physicians--measured from search launch to signed contract--varied widely by specialty, spanning 77 to 228 days.
• Turnover among physicians and APPs has decreased year-over-year but is still higher than 2019 and 2020.

Recommendations:

• Number one is planning. Don't be surprised when a 75-year old retires, Goryl and Mahan said. Have a pipeline for recruitment and put the time and resources in place for planning. Also, have a retention planning program.
• Invest in an internal recruitment team to help with process improvement. Make sure that once a candidate is found, the organization is ready to move.
• Stand out with brand messaging. Candidates are getting multiple offers. Physicians will make decisions based on the colleagues they'll work with. 
• Pay matters but especially for a younger generation and physicians who experienced burnout during the pandemic, what also matters is providing a work-life balance. Talk about a non-traditional schedule.

Also, said Goryl, "Continue to be the organization you said you were in that interview."

THE LARGER TREND

Nearly 150 member health organizations of AAPPR participated in the annual research study representing more than 17,000 searches, 58% of which were specific to physicians.

The report consists of two chapters representing different types of survey results, one regarding compensation and one regarding searches.

Email the writer: SMorse@himss.org