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Hospitals, doctors team up to recruit By Bill Kettler You can live anywhere if you�re a pulmonologist or a surgeon. Jackson County doctors and hospitals are working together to convince those medical specialists and others in short supply locally that Southern Oregon is the best place for them to hang out their shingle. Primecare, an association of independent Jackson County physicians, is leading the coordinated effort. "We�re trying to sell candidates on the quality of the community at large, the quality of the medical community, and how much we need them," says Mike Bond, Primecare�s chief executive officer. Primecare relies on recruiting firms and doctors� personal contacts for leads, Bond says. "We bring candidates in and have them meet with physicians in their specialties. We tour the hospitals and they see the area." Primecare and the hospitals share recruiting expenses, such as the costs of bringing candidates to Jackson County. They also pay recruiting firms� "headhunter" fees and relocation expenses for doctors who decide to come to Southern Oregon. Recruiting costs for a new physician can easily run to five figures. Personnel firms charge $10,000 to $25,000 for physicians with scarce specialties. Relocation expenses for a family can add an additional $7,000 to $12,000 to the bill, says Chuck Wright, chief executive for Providence Health System in Southern Oregon. Wright says competition for physicians in some fields is fierce. For example, only about 60 vascular surgeons per year come out of fellowship programs across the United States. The Rogue Valley�s quality of life continues to be one of its top drawing cards, says Dr. Dan Fennell, a pulmonologist who came here 10 years ago. "For people like me, who are avid outdoorsmen and love to hunt and fish, this is ideal," he says. "But not everybody is like that." Wright says Southern Oregon is a tough sell to some doctors because it�s "betwixt and between" � too urban for doctors who want country life, and too rural for those who have grown accustomed to big-city cultural opportunities. Besides mountains, trees, streams and Shakespeare, Jackson County offers physicians top-notch medical facilities, Bond and Wright say. "We have facilities that you wouldn�t expect to find in a community this size," Wright says. "A physician who visited from St. Louis was impressed by what he found here." "Our medical facilities are a real drawing card," Bond says. "If there�s something we need, we go to the hospital administrators and they figure out a way to get it." Bond says he has never known hospitals and doctors to work together to recruit new physicians. Hospitals typically recruit a doctor to work as an employee of the hospital. Physicians usually recruit someone to join their practice. That doctors and hospitals will work together reflects a shared sense of need, Bond says. "This is the first true communitywide (recruiting) effort I�ve seen." The medical community�s generally collegial attitude has helped drive the cooperative recruiting program, says Dr. Lee Murdoch, a pediatrician who serves as vice president of Primecare. "There aren�t many communities," he says, "that could do this." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.