How has the Recession Affected Physician Recruiting?

The New England Journal of Medicine has reported on a survey conducted by AMN Healthcare on how the recession has affected physician and other healthcare recruiting.

The survey has provided a distinction between how the recession has affected physician recruiting relative to other clinical areas. In general, hospital CEOs reported that their physician recruiting efforts have been less constrained by the recession than have been their efforts to recruit nurses, pharmacists, and allied health care professionals such as therapists and imaging technologists. In some cases, rather than causing them to cut back on physician recruiting, the recession has caused hospital CEOs to accelerate their physician recruiting efforts.

The majority of CEOs indicated that the recession has not caused them to change their recruiting efforts in any clinical area, but a significant number (over 24 percent) said the recession has caused them to decrease their nurse recruiting efforts, while only 12 percent said the recession had caused them to increase those efforts.

The survey also indicates that the recession has not made physician recruiting any easier for most hospitals, and that in some cases, recruiting doctors became more difficult during the economic downturn.

As for the next six months, the majority of CEOs (over 54 percent) said they expect physician recruiting activity at their facilities to increase, while 38 percent said they expect no change. Only 7.5 percent said they expect physician recruiting activity to decrease.

Read the full article in The New England Journal of Medicine, or click here:
http://www.nejmjobs.org/rpt/recession-and-physician-recruiting.aspx