Changing Trends in Hiring Healthcare Talent

Trends in Healthcare Talent Acquisition

It’s hard to keep up with all the changes happening in health care, especially as they relate to talent acquisition and the evolving roles of the health care workforce. To help health care recruiters and HR professionals stay current with the latest trends, AHACareerCenter.org has released a comprehensive report using resources from the American Hospital Association and other trusted sources.

Here are three insights from the 2015 Healthcare Talent Acquisition Environmental Scan:

●        The age range of health care workers spans more than forty years, creating distinctive challenges and opportunities for both employers and employees, such as:

○        Organizational hierarchies may be restructured as Gen Xers and Millennials rise to leadership roles. As Gen Xers and Millennials become leaders, health care organizations may need to consider flattening their structure and removing departmental and management hierarchies. Gen Xers and Millennials, the bulk of the workforce, consider organizational hierarchies as barriers to creativity and innovation.

○        Health care organizations may need to modify job requirements to cater to new and emerging roles. This includes adjusting competencies so that the workforce aligns with new population health needs. For example, some jobs will need to be redesigned as technology advances. As jobs are redefined, the workforce may transition and redeploy to different settings, roles and organizational structures.

●        With changing demographics, communities are becoming increasingly diverse. The unique diversity of a community should be reflected in the leadership and staff of its hospitals and health care systems. However, gaps in diversity still exist, made evident by the following statistics:

○        Minorities represented 31% of patients nationally in 2013, up from 29% in 2011. However, minorities comprise only 14% of hospital board members, 12% of executive leadership positions, and 17% of first- and mid-level management positions.

○        Diversity efforts in hospital recruitment and retention are lacking. Just under half of respondents (48%) said their hospital has a documented plan to recruit and retain a diverse workforce that reflects the organization’s patient population. Only 22% of hospital hiring managers have a diversity goal in their performance expectations.

●        The rate at which physicians are employed directly by hospitals continues to increase. In fact, physician employment by hospitals has risen by more than 54% since 2000. Other statistics gathered in regards to the physician employment market include:

○        More than 244,000 physicians have found positions in hospitals, due to a variety of reasons: changes in lifestyle, decreased interest in owning a business, levels of regulation, and more. Meanwhile, hospitals are seeking out physicians as a way to increase coordination and manage costs.

○        Only 10% of hospital senior leaders are physicians, according to most surveyed CEOs. This is due in part to the fact that most medical schools don’t include formal business training on running a practice, much less a multimillion-dollar health system. With more than half of new physicians entering the field as salaried employees, the potential pool of physician leaders has grown exponentially larger. Soon, having physician leaders will not only will be important, but a mandate.

(HealthcareSource website)