The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR)’s annual Internal Physician and Provider Recruitment Benchmarking Report is officially available. The report is packed with valuable insights designed to transform your recruitment and retention strategies. Most starkly, it highlights the effects of the increasing physician shortage in the United States and the impact it has had on health organizations’ in-house recruitment teams across the country.

As many of you likely know, as recruitment professionals it can be difficult to set tangible goals, productivity levels and benchmarks of success without access to relevant industry data. The benchmarking report provides that exact credible industry data, based on real recruitment professionals’ experience. This report is geared to help our members, their leaders, and the broader physician and provider recruitment industry prepare, plan and forecast to meet the challenges of the evolving healthcare landscape.

Key Takeaways for 2023

More than 150 member health organizations participated in the extensive research study, representing more than 19,000 searches (60% specific to physicians). The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 24,200 openings for physicians and surgeons each year, on average, over the decade, meaning the data from AAPPR’s Benchmarking Report represents close to half of all physician searches in the United States.

Some notable key findings from this year’s report include:

• For the first time in four years, the number of physician searches to replace departing physicians declined from 48 percent in 2021 to 44 percent in 2022, suggesting more physicians stayed with their organizations in 2022 rather than sought new opportunities.
• The percentage of searches still open at the end of the year remained high, with 47 percent of physician searches and 26 percent of advanced practice provider (APP) searches open.
• Primary care specialties of family medicine, internal medicine and hospital medicine are the most sought-after specialties, accounting for more than a quarter of all searches.
• Positions least likely to be filled in 2022 included Surgery: Plastics, Geriatrics and Ophthalmology.
• Some of the longest positions to fill, defined as when a contract is signed, were in Urology (344 days to contract) and Neurosurgery (254 days to contract).

Over 24,000 Ways to Customize Data Outputs

Alongside the 70-page PDF report, recipients gain access to an array of valuable custom online resources. Dive into infographics highlighting nine key takeaways about recruiter data, offering concise yet impactful snapshots of crucial insights. Another infographic unveils 11 pivotal findings regarding search data, providing at-a-glance access to critical trends shaping the industry.

AAPPR’s commitment to empowering healthcare recruitment professionals goes beyond static reports. Our innovative reporting portal offers a dashboard that unlocks over 24,000 ways to customize data outputs. This dashboard lets you manipulate the data of over 19,000 searches in ways that precisely reflect your unique organization, sourcing needs, goals, and objectives. It also lets you filter compensation data on 600 recruitment professionals.  Whether you’re fine-tuning strategies, making data-driven decisions, or seeking to optimize staffing solutions, the benchmarking report empowers you and your team to tailor the information to your needs. It’s more than data; it’s a blueprint for shaping recruitment strategies that drive excellence in healthcare staffing, putting the power of innovation firmly in your hands.

If your organization participated in the annual survey to collect this data, you can gain free access to the AAPPR benchmarking portal. The benchmarking portal includes days to fill and compensation calculators and give you the ability to compare a range of data, including organizational profiles, search information, recruiter profile data and recruiter compensation figures.

Utilizing the Reporting

Access to these customized reports is critical to making informed and strategic decisions around workforce planning, growth management, and target productivity levels. The ability to make these strategic decisions goes a long way towards implementing informed recruitment strategies that can ultimately help you better understand the market and fill searches more quickly.

To see how your organization stacks up and gain access to more valuable industry data, you can purchase the complete 2023 Benchmarking report at https://aappr.org/research/benchmarking/.