The best and brightest people build the best organizations. To attract the best and brightest physician candidates to your organization, you need to understand not only their skillset, but also how they’ll fit in your organization’s culture.
More and more physicians are transitioning from small medical groups and solo practices to hospitals and health systems. That means they’re moving into an employed model, and organizational culture is playing a much more critical role in physician recruiting and retention. Patient care has always been a priority for physicians, but candidates are now placing a greater emphasis on career satisfaction. Do the elements of your organization’s culture resonate with your physician candidates?
In his article, What creates a toxic hospital culture? Val Jones, MD says, “I have found that prestige, location, and generous endowments do not correlate with excellent work culture. It is critically important, it seems, to titrate the balance of power between administration and clinical staff carefully — this is a necessary part of hospital excellence, but still not sufficient to insure optimal contentment.”
In other words, physicians believe hospitals and healthcare organizations should focus more on caring for patients and their staff and less about meeting quotas and upper management happiness.
Beyond medical services, what makes your organization stand out from your competitors? Is it your communication model? Your method of teamwork? Do you have an articulated set of values? If you’re not sure how to articulate your core values, here’s a great article by Jim Collins, Aligning Action and Values.
Recognizing that cultural attributes are core to recruiting and retaining the best physicians, Cejka Search recently conducted a survey of physicians to determine what is most relevant to them in terms of organizational culture. They identified 14 attributes of concern.
Note the top three most important cultural attributes: respectful communication, patient-centered care focus, and team-focused environment. Cultural attributes that registered the least importance to physicians were compensation plan alignment with mission and values, clear mission and values, and objective performance evaluations.
These results show that physician recruitment requires that you seek out, support, and respect physician candidates – through the hiring process and beyond. A happy physician is a physician who stays with your organization, but it requires a careful consideration of culture. Do these organizational attributes fit with your recruiting strategy? We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email at
