By: Allison McCarthy, MBA
Traditionally, the purpose of medical staff development planning was to define where not-for-profit hospitals could provide financial subsidies for private practice recruitment. Given today’s increase in physician employment, the practice subsidy piece of it may not be as relevant, but there are still real benefits that shouldn’t be ignored.
A good medical staff development plan is an “anchor” resource that enables your leaders to set goals and priorities, better direct the team and communicate the results more effectively to the board. Even in situations where most of the recruitment will be via health system employment, it’s still important to understand your medical staff resources in relation to your organization’s strategy and goals:
- Recruitment needs (physicians and advanced care providers)
- Space requirements (ambulatory, procedural, emergency and inpatient)
- Practice management responsibilities
- Operating and capital budgets
Depending on the premise of your medical staff development plan, the analytical approach may vary. For some, the study presumption may be less about population size driving need and more about market goals (i.e. distinct market share objectives to be achieved overall and/or by specialty). For others, it may be about defining the need by panel size or other access parameters. Still, for others, it may take a more targeted approach, one that adapts the process for specialized studies:
- Determines an adequate number of primary care providers for network development and/or population health management.
- Expands specific service lines, like obstetrics or orthopedics, and identify which markets are open to establish additional practices.
In many situations, the purpose of the medical staff development plan is not necessarily about which specialties to recruit, rather how the recruitment needs will be fulfilled. To address competitive issues, your organization may already know it needs more cardiologists. The more pressing concerns are: Can your organization support recruitment of cardiologists into existing private practices? Does it need to employ them given lack of community need?
Qualitative factors can also drive the need for a medical staff development plan. For example, the community health needs assessment may identify demands for additional physicians because of significant underserved populations or disease prevalence. Part of the solution may be to recruit additional providers – but the questions about how the organization can recruit those physicians still need to be answered.
Finally, there are areas where private practice physicians fulfill the communities’ need for primary and specialty care. For the hospitals and health systems in these regions, the medical staff development plan is necessary to define the surpluses and/or shortages of specialists, regulatory defined markets and succession needs.
Is medical staff development planning still relevant? Yes. However, today, it takes new thinking and doing.