PracticeMatch and Sentara Medical Group Announce Recruiting Partnership
Arrangement to Address Physician Shortage, Staffing, and Retention Challenges at 87 Facilities
St. Louis, Mo., and Norfolk, Va. (November 9, 2007) – St. Louis-based PracticeMatch has entered into an agreement with Sentara Medical Group, one of the nation’s top integrated health systems, to provide physician recruitment services for the system. The requirements of the contract will result in at least 10 new positions at PracticeMatch in St. Louis and at Sentara in Virginia, dedicated solely to Sentara’s staffing needs.
"Our agreement is unique in the healthcare industry; however, the challenges faced by Sentara are not. The physician shortage has healthcare organizations across the country retooling their approach to hiring," explains Bob deRoode, Managing Partner at PracticeMatch. "Our work won’t stop there, as we also will address physician retention issues by designing and implementing programs to bring Sentara’s turnover down to 10 percent, against the industry average of nearly 40 percent turnover every five years."
Under the agreement, PracticeMatch will hire and train in-house recruiting executives for Sentara, establishing a comprehensive and centralized physician hiring division for the health system. "Our goal is to become independent of the many outside recruiting agencies that have worked for our facilities," said Rachel Reed, Sentara Director of Business Development. "To fulfill our mission of caring, we must attract and maintain staff with exceptional skill and standards. This intense focus on establishing our own independent physician hiring initiative is essential to that commitment."
The PracticeMatch Healthcare Recruitment Partnership model will include a combination of the company’s products and services, including access to the industry’s most comprehensive database of physicians, the efforts of professional recruiters to fill up to 75 positions in 2008, and training for new in-house Sentara recruiting team members.
This partnership is the fourth joint effort Healthcare Recruitment Partnership launched by PracticeMatch in 2007.
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About PracticeMatch
Based in St. Louis, Mo., PracticeMatch is the industry leader in providing data and services to in-house physician recruiters, and offers a continuum of services designed to provide a clear competitive hiring advantage to health organizations. The company has a history of innovation, being the first to offer physician databases online, the first to fully integrate all recruitment-related services, and the first to launch an online career center with streaming video of both candidates and employers.
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