Hospitals feel privileged to have doctors on roster -- and prove it with some perks

Hospitals in need of referrals increasingly are driving a surge in physician recruitment. Specialists, in particular, can find sweet financial packages being dangled their way.

By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. Dec. 9, 2002.

Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco, Texas, doesn't employ physicians. But that doesn't stop the hospital from recruiting doctors of all kinds, and offering perks like income guarantees and forgiveness agreements to good candidates.

"The motivating reason is patient flow," said Tim Hogan, the hospital's administrative director. "A hospital without a loyal base of physicians is obviously not going to survive."

The prospects of increasing revenue from inpatient procedures and offering well-rounded care have been driving hospitals to fill specialty gaps.

More than 85% of the nation's hospitals are recruiting doctors, a figure that has gradually increased over the past few years, according to a new survey conducted by Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, an Irving, Texas-based recruitment firm.

The difficulty in finding physicians apparently is universal, though facilities in rural areas feel they have to offer higher salaries to compete with the nonfinancial incentives a metropolitan hospital has to offer.

The competition has, in some cases, meant a financial boon for physicians -- especially specialists -- who are looking to relocate. Average income offers calculated by Merritt Hawkins are consistent with other group practice salary studies, but the survey showed high-end offers for some specialists, like radiologists and cardiologists, increased tremendously over last year, while those for primary care physicians did not.

"In the smaller communities especially, there seem to be more hospitals recruiting," said Stanley Burgin, a senior consultant who is with Health Management Group LP, a firm based in Charlotte, N.C. "They know they're going to benefit by having the physician in town." [...]