How To Keep Up With Increasing Demand For NPs and PAs

With the increased demand for primary care, and the decrease in primary care physicians, there have been policy and procedural changes to allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners to take on more responsibilities.  NPs and PAs are now able to prescribe medications, order tests, and make important decisions regarding patient health and safety. In fact, NPs are in such high demand that they are the 4th most popular provider specialty to recruit according to Merritt Hawkins 2018 annual review.  While family medicine and internal medicine physician searches have been in decline, nurse practitioner searches are up almost 100% since 2013/14.

What this means for practice owners and hiring managers is that recruiting nurse practitioners and physician assistants has gotten a lot tougher over the last few years.  Here are some things to be aware of before starting the search process:

Timeline

It’s taking a lot longer to find qualified midlevel providers due to the increased demand.  You should set your timeline expectations accordingly, especially if you’re in a rural area or smaller sized city.  The compensation and benefits package can also significantly alter the recruitment timeline depending on how competitive the package is.

Salary

Speaking of salary, since the demand for NPs and PAs has increased, so have salaries.  If you haven’t recruited a midlevel provider recently, it would be a good idea to visit a compensation analysis website to see what the latest average salary range is in your area.

Benefits

Another thing NPs and PAs are looking for when receiving a job offer is a good benefits package.  Since it’s such a competitive market, midlevel providers have a wide range of options and benefits such as health insurance, dental/vision, CME allowance, and an attractive PTO package can be the difference maker.

Work / Life Balance

A lot of younger providers are placing work/life balance near the top of their list when looking for a new job.  They want to spend time doing things they enjoy, so a ton of on-call responsibilities or mandatory weekends will also be a deterrent when trying to recruit midlevels.

At CHS Recruiting, we are more than happy to partner with you in recruiting your next midlevel provider.