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Update on the survey and my thoughts about training program calls

6 April 2007

First, the survey results are pouring in.  I’m overwhelmed by the response we got this year.  I assume that the ease of completing the survey online as opposed to having to talk with us has contributed to the huge response rate.

Second, I get this monthly GME newsletter that this week included a request from the AMA that recruiters stop calling into training programs to talk with residents and fellows… interupting their work days.  I’m not sure what I think about that. 

On the one hand, I can assume that it would be mighty annoying for a physician in training to be getting a call every hour or so by a recruiter during work hours.  The letter asserts, though, that it is affecting patient care which I find highly unlikely; that the doctor isn’t going to take his finger out of a gaping wound to answer a page from someone he doesn’t know.  The other thing is that this is a free country and, in the course of business, people are allowed to solicit pretty much who they want when they want.  The respondent’s receptiveness may be affected by inappropriate timing, but nothing is verbotten. 

The sanctions they are referring to seem silly to me though.  At night, when our phone rings, my wife looks at the display and puts the phone down almost every time.  I tell her to hand it to me, I answer it and (in most cases) tell them I’m not interested and do not wish to be contacted again and they don’t call back.  The way my wife addresses it, they call back every night until they get you.  Can’t the doctors just take the call and tell them they aren’t interested and be done with it?  If they don’t want to deal with that, how about not putting their number in their AMA listing?  Does it make sense for someone to be removed from AMA access for this?  You think that would make it better or worse?  When they don’t have the doctors from AMA they are going to just call into the training programs and find them out or look them up online.  It won’t solve the problem.

I guess in the end I don’t care one way or the other.  We don’t call into training programs to page residents.  We send them letters and emails, and call them at home when we have the numbers, but we don’t call into the programs.  There is nothing altruistic that prevents us from doing it, just that we never got very good responses or much positive feedback from it so we stopped years ago. 

The thing that is scary to me is that everywhere I turn I’m hearing physician shortage, physician shortage, physician shortage.  In my mind I know that makes our firm a better choice for facilities based on the depth of our experience and the services we offer, but one has to wonder how this is all going to play out.   

Jim

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