Structured selection tools have been used for decades in many industries.  If properly designed and used, they improve quality, reduce turnover, reduce injuries and enhance legal defensibility.

In an interesting twist in healthcare hiring, we now have physicians seeking advice on how to “select” their employer.  They realize that the financial success and the personal satisfaction of their career will depend, to a large extent, on choosing the right situation.  They come out of residency poorly prepared to evaluate potential practice settings, be they with a group or a hospital.  Not surprisingly, a few years into their career, they often discover that it is not what they were looking for and they are back to square one.  This is not the sort of career uncertainty they envisioned when they entered the medical profession.

The wave of physician employment by hospitals continues. Unfortunately, so does the rather haphazard approach to managing this growing and very unique workforce.  We’ve not thought of how to incorporate this workforce phenomenon into the overall healthcare hiring strategy.

Physician employment by hospitals is a newer trend with healthcare hiring.  Success will require a re-thinking of the physician workforce; how we attract, recruit, select, engage and develop these highly paid, very valuable, employees.  This trend also raises questions about the role of human resources, and the practical issues that come with these new employees.