May 04, 2020
We often hear “things have to get worse before they can get better.” The state of healthcare in the United States has faced a physician shortage and lack of accessibility for years. While many solutions have been proposed, no clear, permanent solutions have taken hold. Now, things have gotten worse. When COVID-19 changed our lives, healthcare needed to solve these disparities - and fast. One solution stands out among the chaos as a long-term answer: telemedicine. While telemedicine provides many benefits, the impact on healthcare access and physician hiring are the greatest.
According to The Cleveland Clinic, about 59 million Americans live in health-professional shortage areas. The majority of these include rural areas and low-income communities. The FQHCs providing healthcare services to rural communities struggle to find physicians motivated to relocate. What’s more, these facilities often can’t afford traditional retained physician recruiting services. These circumstances result in rural communities simply not having access to the appropriate number of physicians needed for their population size.
Consider if these facilities began recruiting telemedicine doctors. The pool of interested physicians instantly expands. Through fifteen years of placing physicians, The Inline Group has found location to be the top deciding factor during a physician’s job search. So no matter how great your company culture and salary are, if the physician doesn’t want to relocate there, you’re out of luck. When you include telemedicine in your physician search, you bring much-needed healthcare to your community.
The Inline Group’s team has successfully sourced physicians for telemedicine opportunities nationwide. As our industry faces a shift in the way healthcare is delivered and how physicians are hired, we encourage healthcare professionals to engage with our physician sourcing experts to learn more about where the industry is headed. Click below to request information from a member of our team.