Filling A Void Jackson Hospital, Baptist Health recruit physicians to eliminate acute shortage by David Zaslawsky
During the five-year span that Jackson Hospital President and CEO Don Henderson has been recruiting physicians to the hospital, the medical staff as grown from 140 physicians to 190. Half of that increase was related to a shift in demographics among physicians, namely, age. According to an assessment by Thomson Reuters, the River Region had an estimated shortage of 59 physicians last year, which includes 19 general and family practice physicians and 10 internal medicine physicians. That shortage is expected to reach 85 by 2014, compounded by the fact that 138 of the River Region’s physicians are 55 or older. Due to just the retirement or reduced schedules of older physicians, the River Region is looking at a shortage of 223 physicians by the year 2014. Henderson and Baptist Health Vice President Julia Ventress are working hard to reduce those numbers.
Julia Ventress
“We, as hospital providers, in order to continue providing services for our community, we need to set plans to backfill the retiring work force and recruit additional doctors for additional demand,” Ventress said.
Recruiting physicians not only fills a desperate need, but it is also economic development. “Each doctor is big business for the medical community,” said Ventress, who has recruited 88 physicians to the area during her six years at Baptist Health. “When a doctor opens an office – that’s their headquarters.” A one-physician office has a conservative economic impact of $1 million annually to the community.
“Those doctors are buying houses, paying taxes and purchasing goods and services,” Ventress said. “They are bringing revenue to our community because they have chosen to open their business here.” Physicians also mean big bucks to hospitals. A physician can bring upwards of $860,000 to $3 million a year in net revenue to a hospital, according to an analysis by Merritt, Hawkins Associates, a national recruitment firm for physicians. That analysis, conducted in 2004, said the River Region needed 177 physicians – a combined potential net revenue of $325 million. But getting a physician to come to the River Region when they have numerous opportunities is a formidable task. “If I can just get them here, we usually can entice them to want to come and practice here,” said Ventress, who successfully recruits about one out of seven candidates from the initial phone interview. But convincing a candidate to come visit Montgomery is sometimes difficult. Ventress said many physicians are immediately turned off when they hear “Alabama,” and others just don’t know where Montgomery is. “What we love to do is say come down for a weekend and bring your family,” Ventress said. “Let us have the opportunity to show you around. A lot of recruiting is having that good rapport and developing that relationship on the phone initially and them having enough interest to actually get on a plane and come here. “When they get here – the comments I routinely hear is – ‘I had no idea what a great place this is.’ When they get here, they see that it’s a big, small town. You have everything you need in our city.” Both Jackson Hospital and Baptist Health take the candidates on tours of the area, including neighborhoods,
Don Henderson
schools, shopping centers and downtown, which has proven to be a big hit. “If you look at physician recruiting before the convention center and after the convention center – the convention center has been a game-changer,” Henderson said, referring to the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa at the Convention Center. Ventress said that about one-third of the candidates will return for a second visit, which is when they talk about money. Baptist Health offers incentives, which include a guaranteed income while the physician is ramping up their own office as well as financial assistance with overhead expenses. A physician can also be employed by the hospital, in which case Baptist will assume the responsibility of opening the physician’s practice, building the practice, equipping the practice, staffing it and paying the doctor a salary plus a production bonus. The recruitment of physicians to Montgomery has benefited from the economic downturn, according to Henderson. He said that medium-sized cities such as Montgomery “look a lot more palatable because of supply and demand. Many of the physicians in the larger cities are starving. “Economic conditions play a very important role in the scope of physicians willing to move. Physicians will move to areas that are perceived to have better economic conditions. I would say at the present time, Montgomery is on the way up and our economic picture is looking better and that is not unnoticed in the general medical community.” •
October 2010 Montgomery Business Journal
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