Background: Recruitment is a major cost for hospital medicine groups (HMGs) with some sources citing $400-600k as the cost to hire a new hospitalist (Frenz 2016). The culture of a practice is often the leading factor considered by applicants when deciding to take a position, as well as a major factor when deciding to remain in a position (Sing et al. 2022). Given the level of importance of culture, understanding, and accurately representing the culture of a HMG is vital to recruitment and eventually retention of hospitalists. Despite the clear importance of culture within recruitment, there is a paucity of literature on best practices to capture, incorporate, and cultivate the unique identity of a HMG.
Purpose: Capitalizing on the opportunity presented by a process overhaul, we sought to identify, clarify, and solidify the culture within our group with three main goals: 1) To provide clearer expectations for applicants, 2) Increase shared understanding for our current hospitalists and 3) Allow for dynamic engagement supporting group evolution. Encouraging a variety of interests strongly reinforces a diverse faculty which leads to higher provider and patient satisfaction with improved provider satisfaction leading to improved patient outcomes. Supporting and maintaining a dynamic framework allows recruitment of a faculty that balances cohesion, diversity, and evolution.
Description: We started the process of identifying our culture and developing best practices by creating a Recruitment and Interview (R&I) committee. We evaluated our identity by looking at the roles, responsibilities, areas of interest, and expertise currently held. This helped us develop common themes of the values within our group. We collected information from stakeholders, experienced faculty, and junior faculty. With this information, we determined broad themes of what is important to our HMG, which provided a pathway towards a clear identity both to our existing hospitalists and to our potential applicants. We identified our core values as clinical excellence, collaboration and teamwork, challenging the status quo/making a difference, and DEI and advocacy. We worked with HR to identify standardized questions which would allow us to recognize how applicants would align with these core values within our recruitment process. We intentionally limited our standardized questions to one question per interview and created time and space for candidates and interviewers to interview one another. Evaluations were expected to be completed in a timely manner (immediately post-interview) and focused on concrete, objective accomplishments or experiences, to avoid the pitfall of “They’d be a good fit”. We also built in processes to allow for continuous reassessment of our culture in order to maintain a dynamic environment.
Conclusions: Recruitment, and ultimately retention, is vital to growing HMGs. Culture and belonging (Kato et al. 2025) is frequently recognized as a top factor for applicants when choosing where to work. Intentionally building identity within a HMG is vital to being successful in recruiting and retaining hospitalists. Interviewing is a two way street, and by incorporating the themes and values into our recruitment process, we are better able to identify applicants that will fit into the culture but also will have their goals furthered by our existing culture as well. In addition, by engaging our existing faculty in identifying, codifying, and continually reassessing our culture, we are able to build ongoing engagement.