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INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Hospital information systems can support physician recruitment activities helping identify the type of physician the institution needs, describe the type of medical practice a physician can expect, support the institution's strategic plan for the future, and demonstrate the institution's ability to assist a physician with his or her office billing and other administrative functions.
Recruiting physicians is a difficult, time-consuming, and arduous task for hospital administrators. It is a major challenge for almost any facility, and for facilities in rural areas it is almost a full-time job.
A survey of 560 rural organizations found that 90 percent have recruited a physician in the past two years, 77 percent are actively recruiting, and 82 percent plan to recruit an additional physician in the next year. The survey also showed that 43 percent of the organizations began recruiting six to 12 months before a physician actually needed to start practicing.(a)
Recruiting primary care physicians--general practitioners, family practitioners, and other generalists--is particularly challenging. Primary care physicians are scarce. Although the total number of active physicians increased by 68 percent from 1970 to 1988, the number of general and family practitioners increased only 20 percent. At the same time, competition for primary care physicians has intensified.(b)
As a result, hospitals have had difficulty attracting primary care physicians. In 1990, for example, 50 percent of the openings for physicians in primary care medical areas remained vacant, while 100 percent of openings for specialists were filled.
Physician recruiting usually is accomplished by contacting professional search firms that specialize in physician placement, accessing information about graduating medical residents in centralized data registries, communicating with local and regional medical schools, and obtaining referrals from hospital administrators and medical practitioners. Increasing numbers of hospitals also are developing formal recruiting functions. More than 25 percent of hospitals, group practices, and managed care organizations currently have such recruitment functions, 22 percent more than in 1988.(c)
Much of the work of physician recruitment involves gathering information about physicians' practice potential. Most hospital information systems designed 10 or 20 years ago do not collect data that can be used to help recruit physicians. These information systems are production systems; they receive specific types of data and produce such outputs as payroll checks or hospital bills. The...