New information shows that digital communications shouldn’t be ignored in physician recruitment.
I was talking with one of my clients last night at an awards show. We were congratulating ourselves on winning some awards and looking at other people’s entries.
Then we started reminiscing about other work we’ve done in the past, and the subject of physician recruitment came up. I brought up this “really innovative” direct mail piece we did that featured a piece of x-ray film that showed a watch in the patient’s stomach.
The headline read something like, “Our hospital can give you more of what you need most – time.”
From there, after a couple of glasses of wine, we started brainstorming about more unique ways to attract physicians.
However, when I got to the office this morning, my bubble burst a little when I saw this Health Leaders article that emphasizes a new basic truth in physician recruitment: In the excitement of developing “cool” stuff for docs, it’s imperative not to neglect digital communications.
Currently, 99% of physicians use the Internet and 64% use a smartphone—a number projected to jump to 81% in 2012—according to Manhattan Research’s 2009 “Taking the Pulse” study.
The article highlights several effective strategies:
• Digital recruitment methods
- advertise on medical journal Web sites
- subscribe to an online physician-only job search network
- post employment opportunities on health system websites.
“Technology has become pervasive in the industry and most physicians, just like other walks of life, have some technical prowess,” said Sandra Dilts, administrative director of business development and physician relations at Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, FL.
Just a few years ago, Memorial recruiters received most resumes by fax or mail. Now, they receive about one fax every three months and receive no job inquiries by mail.
“We have an opportunity to be able to reach more people at a faster speed than ever and for them to respond just as quickly,” Dilts said. “It’s made it a 24-hour-a-day industry.”
• Smartphone referral aides
Mary Thomson, vice president of marketing and public relations at Abington, PA, Memorial Hospital, got all of her physician leaders smartphones after she realized they could create an application that would allow them to better communicate with referring docs.
The app provides a list of the referring physicians’ back-office phone numbers and lets Abington doctors place a call with just a few clicks.
“The hardest thing to do was getting all of the numbers, but building the app is apparently pretty easy,” she says. “That is an easy way for the docs to have a phone number to call right at their fingertips if they just operated on another doctor’s patient.”
• Social media
Marketers seem to be split on the effectiveness of using social media for recruitment.
Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA, set up a Facebook page to recruit gastroenterologists.
“When recruiting gastroenterologists we traditionally would do print ads in different medical journals and direct mail,” says Cathy Connolley, Geisinger’s associate vice president of marketing. “But this time we weren’t getting the types of responses that we were looking for.”
The highly-targeted “Geisinger Health System Professional Staffing” page now has 52 fans, but it’s hard to directly link any of those fans to new hires.
From my perspective, social media is just one more tool in the toolbox for physician recruitment. As long as marketers are not posting confidential conversations with docs on social media sites, I’m not sure there’s much harm in it.
In fact, I think your involvement can strengthen the perception of your hospital among most target audiences, including physicians. It’s important to remember that digital communications just give us more options in developing communications strategies.
Posted by Julie Robinson 
