RSS FeedIs There An ‘Easy Button’ For Recruiting Physicians?
3 August 2010Imagine going to the doctor, with a major issue of some sort that needs medical attention – it could be anything. You are in dire need of a treatment, a cure, something to ease the pain and discomfort. You’ve tried letting it go away on its own, but the problem (whatever it is – you fill in the blank) just gets worse. You know it’s serious, and it’s affecting your day-to-day life. You don’t like going to the doctor, but it is the only option left.
The doctor examines you, and narrows your ailment down to a few issues, all of which are fairly common and treatable, if caught early enough. After a few tests, the issue is diagnosed it’s determined you’ve caught it early, and your doctor prescribes a treatment that includes a medical procedure and some drug therapy.
What? You don’t want to pay for drugs or surgery, you tell the doctor – those things cost extra money, and they may cause additional discomfort…
The doctor wonders: ‘How did this patient expect me to treat them for this serious condition? By waving a magic wand, or casting a spell?’ While some health issues may be cured by diet or lifestyle changes, your particular issue is not one of those things, the doctor explains – yours is a common, but potentially serious condition, and needs to be handled right away…
You leave this doctor, determined to go find another doctor who will find a way to cure you without the additional expense of time and money. Two other doctors prescribe the same exact course of treatment, so you keep looking.
Finally, upon your fourth try, you find a doctor who doesn’t prescribe any of those things that could cost you more money. Not only that, Dr. #4 is so sure of his treatment methods, he won’t charge you anything unless you are cured! He explains that he has a new, quicker, cheaper, better, faster, easier way to fix your problem.
Dr. #4 spends about 5-10 minutes with you and recommends some special exercises, plus a few dietary changes and sends you home… You leave, pleased that you won’t be spending any additional money or time on surgery or drugs, but not feeling any better physically.
One of two things could happen now – you could either be cured by the lifestyle changes, or not. If you are cured, congratulations! On the fourth try you found the one doctor out of four who was right, and the other three were wrong – not great odds for the doctors in your town. It’s probably unlikely that out of four physicians, three were basically wrong (although it could happen, and certainly it has to many patients with rare conditions!)
On the other hand, the more likely scenario is that the dietary changes could prove to be insufficient – and your problem worsens. You go back to Dr. #4 – he says you may need some more aggressive treatment. However, Dr. #4 does not perform surgery as part of his practice, so he is unable to help you any further. You’re situation is becoming more urgent – no more time to scout out new, additional doctors.
So you return to Dr. #1 – your original doctor… only to be informed that your situation has since worsened. Dr. #1 finds that, instead of a minor procedure and some medication, you are now going to need major surgery, which will be more costly in both time and money, than if you had done the procedure originally. You now reluctantly agree, as time is now running out for you… Ultimately, you have the surgery and are cured, after a very long recovery, and tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills…
So, by now you’re probably wondering: what the heck does this story have to do with physician recruiting?
Our clients, much like the patient in the above story, come to us with a need – they need physicians. We, as providers of recruiting services, can provide a course of “treatment” which often includes a combination of a variety of methods – including email marketing, direct mail marketing, phone sourcing, and advertising.
Direct mail, advertising, and other ancillary fees seem to cause many potential clients a great deal of discomfort initially – the thought of it seems to cause pain and anxiety: Is advertising really necessary? Direct mail costs too much, it doesn’t work, we just want to get our doctors placed without all that “extra stuff” (e.g. ‘surgery’ and ‘medication’.) In fact, a recent survey we conducted of in-house recruiters showed that what many staff recruiters dislike most about working with retained recruiting firms is paying for direct mail and other ancillary recruitment costs during the course of the search.
However, as a physician search firm, our sourcing methods, including direct mail, are proven – they work, and they work well. Glancing through our placements from the past 2 months, about 60% of the physicians placed were sourced via a direct mail campaign for the position where the physician signed. Probably about 30-40% of our total placements are obtained from direct mail campaigns, if not more – that’s a conservative estimate.
The initial uncertainty and anxiety about retaining a search firm and investing in search campaigns up front is understandable – especially in the economic times we find ourselves in at the moment. But the results of retained search, including direct mail and our other marketing and sourcing methods are real. Don’t you think that perhaps the ‘pain’ of a direct mail campaign (and other recruiting costs) is minimal, as compared to the much more severe pain and expense of a gaping hole in your physician staff, from which revenue continues to hemorrhage out of your facility?
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