Coronavirus Pandemic Flips Clinician Workforce Market

According to a new report from the clinician recruitment firm Merritt Hawkins, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically reduced the demand for clinicians in the healthcare workforce.

The new Merritt Hawkins report, “2020 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives and the Impact of COVID-19,” examines clinician recruitment data for the one-year period ending March 31, 2020. Although the number of physician search engagements the company conducted during the period increased, search engagements conducted since March 31 have declined 30%.

“The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has changed the playing field in the physician recruiting arena, turning what was a buyer’s market for physicians seeking practice opportunities into a seller’s market for hospitals, medical groups and other healthcare facilities seeking to recruit physicians. As a result, for those healthcare facilities that are recruiting physicians or are planning to do so, conditions now are more favorable than they have been in years,” the report says.

The top five most requested job searches were as follows:

1. Family medicine

2. Nurse practitioner

3. Psychiatry

4. Radiology

5. Internal medicine