Tell Us the Doctor Sent You

BY KRISTINE A. OLSON

Icheck my smartphone and shoot a text to a physician candidate who is sailing in the Pacific Ocean. I take a call from an Essentia Health physician who is hiking in the desert and forward an email to my team with the names of potential candidates for follow-up. In between, I watch my seventh-grade daughter play volleyball on a Saturday in a high school gym in south Fargo.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year — that’s what physician recruitment looks like at Essentia Health, where I serve as vice president of Physician & Professional Services. I lead a 20-member team responsible for recruiting physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other advanced practitioners to care for patients in Essentia Health’s 68 clinics and 15 hospitals.

My team deploys traditional recruiting routes such as journals, conferences and advertisements. While these are still important avenues, at least 74 percent of our candidates now come through social media and 24 percent are “known to us,” which means they are referred to us by our employees.

To increase the known-to-us referrals, Essentia Health recently embarked on a new candidate-sourcing tactic. We created a grassroots referral campaign that targets communities where Essentia is looking for physicians. Our goal is to find candidates through the network of people and communities that are home to Essentia Health’s clinics and hospitals across North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Idaho.

We recruit practicing physicians as well as those who are still in medical school, residencies and fellowships. The same holds true for advanced practitioners. We want to bring folks back home after they’ve gone away for their education, training or job opportunities.

Our latest campaign began with an “ah-ha” moment that came as I listened to a long-time physi- cian talk about why he had come to Fosston, Minn., and how he loves his work and his community. I realized he should be recruiting. With that picture in my head, I reached out to our marketing team and we talked through the idea. Our advertising agency created a campaign based on the idea of a physician who is well-known in the community saying, “I’m looking for someone to practice medicine with me.”

The initial thought was a series of newspaper ads. But after the advertising agency listened to the physicians’ testimonials and why they came to practice in our rural communities, we expanded the campaign to include radio ads and postcards to distribute in communities and throughout Essentia Health.

The advertising campaign’s call to action is simple: Call this 1-800 number and tell them the good doctor sent you. My team fields the calls and follows up for details to qualify the lead. Then the lead goes to the appropriate recruiter or our database for future follow-up. Anyone who identifies a lead and provides complete information receives an Essentia Health hooded sweatshirt as a token of our thanks.

The response has been overwhelming. We’re not only finding practicing physicians and advanced practitioners, but we’re also creating a database of future health care professionals with whom we can build relationships over time. We’re also engaging our own employees who are referring friends and relatives to join the Essentia Health team. PB

Kristine A. Olson Vice President of Physician & Professional Services Essentia Health Fargo, N.D.

701.364.8044 kris.olson@essentiahealth.org