Prioritizing hard-to-fill specialties
Posted by Drew Terry
How do you work through a growing list of open positions and other responsibilities that come with physician recruitment?
Do you take a systematic approach, where you prioritize and plan every step, or does it feel more like organized chaos, swatting down tasks as they appear at the top of your to-do list? Or does the truth lie somewhere between those two?
With a little reviewing, planning and prioritizing your job openings, you may be able to better understand which ones require more time to fill - and which ones can afford slightly less attention for the time being.
One method of organizing tasks is the Eisenhower Matrix, or Urgent-Important Matrix. This organizing framework is named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who used it to make tough decisions quickly by prioritizing based on importance and urgency.
In this method, your highest priorities become the tasks that are both important and urgent. These become the ones you work to solve first. Tasks that are important but less urgent, you can plan to address later. Tasks that are urgent but less important are opportunities to delegate to others, while those that are neither important nor urgent can be left to handle at a later time.
Delegation isn’t always an option, and often, all job openings may be on an ASAP timeline because virtually all physicians and advanced practice providers are high-impact roles. Still, using this quadrant or another prioritization method can help identify where to begin working through your list of job openings.
Determining importance and urgency may involve several factors, including:
- How difficult the role is to fill
- The number of vacancies in a department
- The target fill date
- The quality of your candidate pipeline
- The financial impact the opening has on your organization
- The strain on existing staff
- The effect on the level of patient care
Once you’ve evaluated your factors and prioritized your job openings, consider setting aside time dedicated specifically to recruiting your most important and urgent openings. This may mean blocking out time on your calendar, turning off your email for a time period or putting away your phone.