Lack of Retention: Physician Shortage

Hello and welcome back to our “Season of Lack” here on the blog. Yes, that may sound depressing at first glance, but far from it. It’s hopeful. It’s daring. We are on a mission to explore the problems of the healthcare industry in depth instead of ignoring the issues or putting a band aid on a serious injury. We know that true leadership in healthcare requires us to look critically at the challenges our organizations are facing, examining them thoroughly in order to cultivate creative solutions.

Today we continue our exploration into the…

lack of retention

Last week, we explored in depth the problem of high turnover rates in our industry. Now we continue to unravel the thread by looking into the nationwide physician shortage.

Simply put, It is extremely difficult to find and hire new physicians.  Physician shortage runs rampant across the healthcare industry and is present within every specialty, from pediatricians to neurosurgeons. Perhaps surprising to some, this problem existed long before COVID-19. Although it’s definitely increased in intensity since the pandemic began. 

In fact, according to Joyce Frieden, editor of Medpage Today, the global crisis has only exacerbated this problem. “The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) publishes an annual report on the physician shortage; in its 2019 report, AAMC projected a shortfall of 40,000 to 122,000 physicians over the next decade, with a shortage of 29,000 to 42,900 doctors in 2020, depending on several factors” (Frieden, emphasis added). 

You would think that with how difficult it is to procure qualified physicians for a healthcare organization, leaders would be bending over backwards to retain the qualified candidates they do hire. But we already know that physician retention is an increasing parallel issue. So what gives? Organizations scour the country for qualified physicians, relocate them to their corner of the country, and what? They leave their retention entirely to chance? 

Something doesn’t add up. 

According to MGMA data, as of 2018, only 20% organizations had any physician engagement program (MGMA Stat). And of those 20%, the data doesn’t address the quality of effectiveness of the programs. With this information we begin to unearth a whole new level of problems woven together under the surface.

Physicians aren’t engaged.

They don’t feel understood. There’s a rampant lack of trust and the roots of burnout peek through the soil, easily scorched by the sun. Employee trust in their leaders is an age-old problem and, it turns out, employed physicians are no different. 

In the coming weeks we will pull at some of those interconnected threads mentioned above, but there is one last piece of the “Lack of Retention” puzzle we’ll explore before moving on. It is, in fact, perhaps the most expensive issue on the table. You may have guessed it, though you surely don’t like it, next time we’ll unpack the metaphorical and literal “Cost of Locums”.