Welcome to the new year! I wish all of my readers a happy and heathy new year!
Before the holidays I wrote about keeping good nurses working and soon after started reading about the same issues impacting physicians. Over the years I've worked with many physicians and known of several female physicians who worked part time because of their desire to be home for their small children. Now, there is proof that other physicians, including men are working less for other if not the same reasons.
California Physician Workforce: Supply and Demand through 2015 reports that the California Department of Finance forecasts that the state population will grow by 7.7 million people (22%) between 2000 and 2015. The report concludes that the state will likely face a physician shortage in 2015 and key findings include:
- More than 26,000 physicians were over age 55 in 2000. Many of these physicians are likely to retire by 2015; nearly 33% of the practicing physicians over 55 are in primary care specialties (General Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and General Pediatrics).
- A growing proportion of physicians in the state are female; while 24% were female overall in 2002, 36 of those between the ages 35 and 44 were female.
The report recommends encouraging physicians to practice more hours or to delay retirement and to address physician concerns to increase supply. It suggest that this can be accomplished in collaboration with professional groups and provider associations. The report also recommends investment and support in new technology, such as information systems, that improve efficiency and effectiveness.
American Medical News reports on a looming physician shortage and points to the fact that physicians may be spending more time doing research and teaching than they have in the past. But there is also anecdotal evidence that the younger physician generation is working fewer hours then their predecessors at the same age. Consequently,they are seeing fewer patients. They also report that there is a general sense that women physicians tend not to work full time in some stages of their careers and physician retirement ages are also difficult to pin down.
The Deloitte CEO Study I've referenced before also addresses Physician Hospital Loyalty and notes that CEO rely on tried-and-true strategies for maintaining physician relationships and loyalty. The most popular strategies include putting physicians on the Board of Directors (68 percent of CEOs report that their hospitals do this), providing state-of-the-art technologies (67 percent), providing connections to hospital computer applications/systems (66 percent), offering medical directorships (60 percent), and hosting physician retreats/education sessions (52 percent). I would add that effective CEO's over the next 10 years will also conducted workplace assessments to identify the specific needs and priorities of their specific physician workforce.
The AHA Environmental 2005 Assessment highlights the Futurescan, Health Trends and Implications 2005-2010 finding that few health systems are found on the annual listings of best places to work. To successfully compete for the best workers in the coming years, health systems will need to remake their workplaces in ways that attract and keep young, highly motivated employees.
One additional source of information from Health Affairs titled "Prepaid Group Practice Staffing and U.S. Physician Supply: Lessons for Workforce Policy" may also provide additional information on these topics.
In summary, you don't know what you have until you ask! Talk to your physicians or better yet, conduct focus groups or surveys to identify trends, and gather data to help you conduct return on investment analysis for improvement efforts. My suspicion is that baby boomer doctors are not much more different than nurses when it comes to balancing work and family commitments or desired lifestyles!
If you are a physician, please share with my readers what you think!
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