4 Ways to boost physician recruitment in a competitive market

In an era of healthcare giants, when the mergers of large hospitals with even larger systems create a new competitive landscape for providers of all types, what happens to the medical groups, physician practices and community hospitals that strive to remain independent?

Maintaining independence in the face of new competition from organizations with significant resources isn’t easy. For the first time, fewer than half of physicians hold ownership in their medical practice, new research from the American Medical Association (AMA) shows. Young physicians in particular are more inclined to join larger practices than seek to own their own, especially in light of new payment models and compliance requirements.

At Holston Medical Group (HMG), our independent physician practice will soon face new challenges when two large, regional health systems merge to form one monopoly across the region. Nevertheless, we believe our success in recruiting physicians positions us to remain independent while meeting our community’s healthcare needs.

A Model for Physician Recruitment Success
Located in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, HMG serves a population with substantial healthcare issues. The Appalachian region is one of the most economically challenged in the country, and many patients are high-risk with multiple health disparities.

Our group was founded in 1977 with the help of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to bring primary care physicians (PCPs) to the region. Today, HMG comprises 110 physicians and 50 mid-level providers who represent 19 specialties. We manage care for 200,000 patients in a 600,000-person area.

Our success in recruiting PCPs and physician specialists strengthens our ability to provide high-quality, high-value care—critical to success in a transformational healthcare environment. Four key differentiators help set us apart.

Ownership. Our physicians are owners in HMG. They have the benefits of being an employee, such as paid time off and insurance coverage, but instead of working for a system, they work for the patients they serve, themselves and their peers.

In our recruitment and onboarding efforts, we’ve found that having ownership better matches with physicians’ idea of what it means to be a doctor by giving them greater freedom in making care decisions, determining the types of services offered and implementing solutions based on patient feedback. Building physician leadership within the group is at the core of HMG’s success. As owners, physicians have many opportunities to become involved in the leadership of the group, such as through committees, board elections and positions within each office to lead the company’s patient-centric approach to care. It is gratifying to see the number of physicians who thrive under this model and build upon their passion for medicine in our practice.

Innovation. Our physicians act upon the creative ideas their peers present without having to compete with other focuses—and it’s a game-changer for our practice and allows individual offices to pilot programs that may be implemented company-wide. The ability to sit together and bounce ideas off one another excites physicians, and it holds strong appeal for the physicians we recruit as well. Some of the physician-led innovations we’ve introduced include the following:

• A nationally recognized clinical research department that positions HMG to provide emerging treatment options for our sickest patients.
• Our extensivist clinic that helps patients with complex care needs avoid a trip to the emergency department and a potential inpatient stay. The clinic is staffed by hospitalists and nurses with intensive care unit training. It provides care for patients suffering from heart disease, renal failure and more.
• A pharmacogenetics testing partnership enables HMG physicians to help test ways to apply precision medicine in clinical settings—for example, by using pharmacogenetics to determine the most effective drug treatment for an individual based on an analysis of that patient’s DNA.

Value-based approaches to care. We are committed to providing higher-quality care at lower cost. As a result, many of our innovations center on value. In addition to our extensivist clinic, HMG is an early adopter of genomics. Through this initiative, we empower our physicians to improve quality at the point of care and better address our community’s greatest healthcare challenges, including struggles with opioid addiction.

Because we’re a multispecialty group, our physicians are better able to coordinate care for patients with multiple healthcare needs and collaborate on approaches that improve outcomes while reducing cost. It’s a patient-centric approach that appeals to physicians who seek to make a greater impact while navigating the complexities of value-based reimbursement models—together.

Investment in technology—for other community providers. One of our biggest differentiators is our investment in community health information exchange technology, which we offer to every provider in our community. For physicians, this technology provides access to patient records inside their existing workflows at the point of care, increasing efficiency. It also helps to ensure greater coordination of care with specialists outside our network. And when new patients present to us with emergent care needs, the community health information exchange increases the potential for our physicians to have the right information at the right time—including at the point of care.

Surviving—and Thriving
As healthcare organizations navigate the move away from fee-for-service and the push toward consumer-based approaches to care delivery, those with the agility to innovate and collaborate quickly and effectively will be best positioned for success. HMG’s physician-owned model not only strengthens our ability to attract top talent, but also sustains us in the face of new market challenges.

Scott Fowler, MD, FACOG, is president and CEO of Holston Medical Group.

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