HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC affected staffing in hospitalist groups? According to our 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, just under one-third of hospitalist respondents noted that staffing had not changed since the pandemic, but that was the minority. More hospitalists complained that post-pandemic, their groups didn’t have enough physicians or that the physicians they have don’t want to pick up extra shifts.
Here’s a look at what hospitalists had to say about post-pandemic staffing in their programs.
“We need more doctors”
More than half (53.1%) said their groups need more physicians. That percentage was significantly higher among pediatric hospitalists (60.8%) than for hospitalists who treat adults (52.6%). It was also slightly higher among nonacademic hospitalists (51.9%) than academic hospitalists (47.4%).
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Sort the data by employer type, and you see that 58.9% of hospitalists working for national hospitalist management companies said their groups need more physicians. Among hospitalists working for universities and medical schools, the percentage was 50%.
By region, hospitalists in the Mountain part of the country were the least likely (39.4%) to say their groups needed help in the form of more staffing. The percentage was highest in the Pacific, where 56.5% of hospitalists said their groups need more doctors.
Finally, among hospitalists, nocturnists had the lowest percentage of those saying their groups need to bring in more physicians. Only 41.5% of nocturnists agreed their programs need more doctors
“People don’t want to work extra shifts”
Just over one-third (37.4%) of hospitalists agreed that since the pandemic, people in their groups don’t want to work extra shifts. The number was lowest among hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups (30%) and highest among hospitalists working for hospitals: 39.7%.
By region, that percentage took a big jump among hospitalists in the Pacific region, where 58.8% said their colleagues aren’t taking extra shifts. The percentage by region was lowest in the Southwest, where 30.4% of hospitalists said their group members weren’t interested in extra shifts.
The more hospitalists said that colleagues not wanting to work extra shifts was a problem in their group, the more likely they were to be burned out or generally dissatisfied with their career.
Among hospitalists who said they were dissatisfied with their career, for example, 57.1% said their colleagues didn’t want to work extra shifts. Among hospitalists who reported being “very satisfied” with their careers, only 29.9% said that their colleagues refusing to work extra shifts was a problem.
No change
Just under one-third (27.8%) of hospitalists said nothing had changed in their group’s staffing since the pandemic.
Physicians working for national hospitalist groups may have seen the most significant change in their staffing since the pandemic, seeing as how those doctors had the lowest response rate (16.1%) to the “no change in staffing” question. Among hospitalists working for universities and medical schools, by comparison, 32.5% said not much had changed in staffing post-pandemic.
There did seem to be a gender difference in those responses. While 21.3% of female hospitalists said their groups’ staffing needs had not changed since the pandemic, more male hospitalists (30%) said the same thing.
“Significant cut back in FTE hours”
A small group of hospitalists (13.7%) said their groups had cut back FTE hours since the pandemic. It’s not clear if people who chose that answer meant that their groups had cut physicians’ work hours or that physicians had asked to work fewer hours.
