BUSINESS CONSULT
LILI HAY, Senior Consultant, at ECG Management Consultants
JENNIFER MOODY, Associate Principal, at ECG Management Consultants
Why Hospitals and Provider Groups
Should be Thinking About Physician
Succession Planning
Initial Issues to Consider
Establishing an effective succession plan begins with
understanding several key issues.
Practice style
Work-life balance expectations can make finding
replacements challenging. For example, it’s becoming more common for incoming physicians to design
flexible work schedules, adjust their FTE status, or
stop taking call. Established physicians also have
expectations in this area, such as potentially being
more comfortable in private practice as opposed to
an employment model. A good succession plan will
bridge expectations of multiple groups.
As the role of advanced practice clinicians across
medical specialties expands, clinical staffing structures could look very different in coming years, even
potentially reducing the need for physicians in a
given market. Additionally, the new generation of increasingly specialized physicians creates gaps where
a larger proportion of generalists were once able to
conduct routine procedures and cover general call.
P
hysicians are aging out of the workforce in
greater numbers than new physicians are
entering the field. In fact, approximately
41% of the current physician workforce is over the
age of 55, according to Infogroup USA, even as
the number of new physicians entering the field
increases every year. While this feeds the already
expected physician shortage, it also triggers an
urgent need for health systems and provider groups
to assess their physician transition and succession
planning needs.
Many of the most rapidly aging specialties do not
rank among the top 20 specialties most frequently
requested from national physician search firms –
illuminating the impending gap between physician
supply and demand for numerous specialties. Cardiology is one of these rapidly aging specialties, with
nearly half of cardiologists over the age of 55. As a
38 CardioSource WorldNews
result, physician succession planning is a significant
concern for hospitals relying economically on their
cardiology service lines.
Succession planning is often equated with
retirement planning, yet they are not synonymous.
Retirement planning implies a onetime need for a
singular physician replacement—as one physician
retires, another physician with similar expertise and
practice style must be hired. Succession planning,
however, is a perpetual part of every labor cycle. It’s
one component of a healthcare organization’s ongoing assessment of workforce supply against organizational and community needs. In today’s rapidly
changing healthcare landscape of new care models,
provider employment arrangements, and reimbursement rules, proactive succession planning is critical.
Without it, hospitals and medical groups may find
themselves unable to meet clinical demand.
Physician Deployment
With the increasing popularity of new patient care
models, physician succession presents an opportunity
to evaluate where and how physician services are
provided in the community. For example, healthcare
organizations may consider moving physicians out of
traditional medical office complexes and into neighborhood-centered care facilities. Along with where
physicians are deployed, it’s also important to know
when transitions need to take place. If practices and
hospitals hire new physicians too far ahead of succession needs, incomes for established providers could be
negatively impacted. On the other hand, a prolonged
gap without needed coverage could result in patient
access issues across the care continuum, which can
result in losing patients to other organizations.
Governance
Changes to medical staff bylaws and hospital
policies often need to occur to adjust for changing
November 2016