Physician Recruitment and Your Center: Four Questions to Consider

Physician recruitment is a necessary activity for ASCs of all types — including centers still under development, newly-formed centers in the process of ramping up, and established centers looking to revitalize their operations. This article focuses specifically on the importance of physician recruitment activities for existing surgery centers.

1 - Q: Why Should My Center Recruit Additional Physicians?

A: Quite simply, physician recruitment allows your center to increase its case volume and revenues. Most centers have excess capacity to allow new physicians to join with minimal disruption to their existing schedule and activities. This new volume is beneficial because it can help drive out system inefficiencies. Physician recruitment also allows your center to maximize the space, staff and equipment you already have in place, and counteract inflationary pressures.

Bottom line: bringing on additional physicians allows your center to realize economies of scale by helping you get more “bang for your buck” from the staff, equipment, location and utilities you’re already using.

2 - Q: What Type of Physicians Should I Add?

A: When considering the type of physicians and specialties to target, start by examining what your center already has in place. Ideally, you want to maximize your existing services by leveraging the core competencies of your equipment, center layout, staff, and staff skill sets. Adding new specialties often makes sense, especially if your center is single specialty because it helps you spread your risk across multiple specialties and better absorb reimbursement changes and market trends. Just remember that new specialties require separate feasibility analyses when determining whether they make sense financially in your center.

When evaluating which specialties make the most sense to add, consider which ones will be complimentary to the procedures and specialties your center already features. Also consider the physical limitations of your center in terms of space; your center’s layout and ability to expand; the new equipment that would be required; how much changes and additions will cost; and how long it will take to see a return on investment, access to capital and the ability to bring in new staff suited to new specialties or train existing staff to handle new procedures.

Bottom line: examine which specialties will work best with your center’s current specialty mix and everything your center already has in place, including your center’s equipment, staff, layout and ability to expand.