Here’s How Healthcare Recruiters Help Healthcare Organizations Find Better Leaders Faster

Considering Healthcare Executive Search in 2022? Here’s What You Need to Know

What is the Current State of Healthcare Recruiting?

It may not make the nightly news, but staffing shortages undercut our healthcare infrastructures. Our seasoned workforce is aging out while simultaneously, baby boomer populations are increasing their need for skilled care. What’s at stake here is patient care outcomes as the health of our nation hangs in the balance. This isn’t headline-seeking melodrama, either. Healthline reports the average Americans health is declining, while the American Hospital Association calls the current staffing shortage a “national emergency.” Becker’s annual survey shows staffing is the c-suite’s number one concern these days.

Speaking of the c-suite, the challenging times we live in call for innovation from healthcare leadership. Yet, the c-suite, like other avenues of healthcare staffing, is also more challenging to find. Hospital CEOs are leaving their positions at a record pace, making it much harder now to conduct healthcare executive searches that yield candidates quickly.

The Advisory Board reports in the first half of 2022, 62 hospital CEOs left their jobs. It was a nearly 50% increase over the prior year. Often, we see CEOs stepping into a more advisory capacity to a board member or hospital chair to help transition a new CEO. However, 53 of the 62 CEOs that left their hospitals this year ended up in a different position outside their organization—or outside healthcare entirely.

These numbers do not count the volume of CEOs who throw in the towel and enter retirement, particularly after COVID and the challenges of a declining economy. This year, 185 healthcare CEOs also retired, while 46 CEOs at healthcare companies also left their businesses for either a new opportunity or retirement.

Indeed, the top spot at our nation’s healthcare organizations is not without challenges. A recent survey showed healthcare leaders worry about the following:

Accessibility of care
Compliance
Cost of care
Data and data security
Digital transformation
Finance and the bottom line
Healthcare delivery
Patient consumerism
Talent shortages and staffing

It’s no wonder HealthExec says, “Hospital CEOs are leaving their roles at a record pace,” and Becker’s says, “Hospital CEOs are joining the Great Resignation.” Becker’s points out that executive resignations aren’t unique to healthcare, but because the industry is facing severe talent shortages, the situation is more alarming. NBC News points out that the c-suite isn’t immune to the burnout felt by our pommeled healthcare workers since COVID hit our shores.

Given the critical nature of the healthcare executive top spot, how can hospitals and healthcare organizations counteract what seems to be an accelerating trend toward CEO turnovers? For a growing majority of healthcare and life science organizations, partnering with healthcare executive search firms like Merraine Group® is the go-to response to a challenging hiring environment.

Looking for c-suite talent? Call us at 845-290-1900.

What Do Healthcare Executive Search Firms Do?

Most healthcare organizations use third-party healthcare recruiters if only to provide locum tenens support. But an increasing number of organizations turn to executive search recruiters to find world-class innovators to lead their hospitals and health systems.

Generally, there are two types of healthcare executive search firms:

Contingency firms, like Merraine Group®, work for free upfront and receive a fee after the executive is placed.
Retained healthcare recruiters who charge a fee for their ongoing effort.

The best healthcare executive search firms conduct their efforts discreetly and confidentially, often with candidates they’ve built long-term relationships with over many years. For most c-suite roles, the best candidates are always employed, so the heightened sensitivity that comes with these confidential discussions isn’t for any generalized healthcare recruiters. In most cases, a direct inquiry from a competing healthcare organization will be immediately rejected by the candidate—if only because they’re worried their colleagues will hear of the conversation.

An executive healthcare recruiting company like Merraine Group® offers a proactive yet sensitive approach toward relationship building with the targeted candidates you dream about employing. Working with highly specialized, very discreet executive search recruiters is very different from working with general healthcare recruiting firms. We work with our clients to develop strategies to engage specific types of executive leaders and then nurture these relationships all the way through to contract negotiations.

Why is it So Difficult to Find Qualified Healthcare Leaders?

Like virtually every role in healthcare today, there is more demand than supply. The healthcare worker shortage extends all the way to the top spot in your organization, something that certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise. But this shortage grows more acute at the top levels of your business because not just any leadership will do in today’s complex healthcare environment.

The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) conducted a survey to determine the most in-demand skills for CEOs today. They found that healthcare recruiters search for leadership that embodies these characteristics:

Effective change managers.
Emotionally intelligent.
Delegation and the ability to influence rather than direct.
Strategic thinkers.
Collaborators.
Innovative yet critical thinkers.
Agile adaptors to rapidly evolving challenges.
Strong decision-making skills.
Visionary.
Solid communicators.
Financial managers and fiscal stewards.
Servant leaders.
Able to develop positive relationships with physicians and other clinical leaders.

According to the survey, one of the most challenging characteristics to find in the healthcare c-suite was the innovative thinking necessary to lead hospitals at a time of great change. At the same time, finding clinical leaders who are also experts in the business of healthcare is a challenge. It’s also tricky to find collaborative physician leaders comfortable relying on others, given that physicians receive little training related to administrative leadership.

The problem for healthcare executive search firms, is that the easy job is finding a CEO or physician leaders who can troubleshoot the administrative or clinical problems of today. What’s harder is combining the daily pursuit of best practices with the long-term vision necessary to navigate tomorrow’s healthcare challenges.

Click here to talk to Merraine Group about the visionary leadership we represent.

What Are the Benefits of Our Executive Search Recruiters?

Why are a growing number of hospitals outsourcing their c-level executive healthcare search to third-party recruiting firms? The answer lies in the benefits of working with healthcare executive search recruiters, which include:

Find passive job candidates
Streamline recruiting processes and free up time
Build candidate pipelines
Improve candidate quality
Meet diversity goals

Build long-term passive candidate pipelines

At Merraine Group®, we believe our efforts to build long-term relationships with passive executive candidates offers the most critical benefit for hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Given the highly competitive nature of healthcare recruiting, most of the c-suite is bombarded by recruiter inquiries. It’s not unlikely for a CEO to have several calls a week for available opportunities.

However, most of these calls are “cold,” meaning the healthcare recruiters calling on these executives have not taken the time to build trust with that c-level candidate. It is unlikely that the recruiter will ever make it past the administrative assistant to reach the CEO.

At Merraine Group®, we understand that healthcare executive search is a marathon and not a sprint. Our firm has been building relationships with passive job candidates since 2001. Most CEOs are passive in that they would never consider applying for an open executive level position. Instead, they trust Merraine’s executive search recruiters to initiate the conversation as part of their succession planning efforts for their organization.

Building networks of passive c-suite and executive level talent pays off over years of effort. But those networks are exactly why hospitals choose Merraine’s team of experienced healthcare recruiters to find them the perfect leader to steer their ship.

Free up internal HR teams

Given the volume of healthcare jobs open today, most in-house healthcare recruiters in hospitals are overwhelmed. These talented search professionals are typically spread across multiple specialties and departments in your organization, from hospitalists and ER doctors to billers and coders, cafeteria staff, marketing, and more. The benefit of using a healthcare executive search firm like Merraine Group® is that we have a singular focus on finding talent at the top of an organization. Our attention is not divided with the pressures of finding candidates below the leadership level. This is a critical benefit particularly because it takes years of diligent effort to build trust with these high-level knowledge workers at the top of their career path. By partnering with third-party executive search recruiters, hospitals automatically achieve competitive advantage over facilities that do not. This, in turn, frees up your internal healthcare recruiters to focus on all of the other positions below the c-suite level.

Leverage healthcare recruiter networks (h3)
Finding a replacement CEO is not a one-and-done process. It takes months and often years of due diligence to find qualified executives willing to make a move. Healthcare executive search firms like Merraine Group® have been building relationships for more than two decades across the healthcare c-suite. We are the go-to healthcare recruiters for some of the most innovative and insightful young executive talent in the nation. But we’ve also forged strong bonds with senior leaders at the apex of their careers. Each executive search recruiter at Merraine Group® brings extensive networks of healthcare leaders to your organization. It’s a huge benefit that in-house recruiters cannot offer—because they don’t have the time.

Are you ready to put our networks to work? Contact us 845-290-1900 today.

Improve the quality of your hire

A new survey shows 24% of healthcare leaders say “that when HR fills a position, the hire is often unsatisfactory for the needs of the organization.” Another 31% report they can’t find qualified candidates to fill executive and clinical positions. Nearly 20% report their internal search is often so slow it costs their hospital time and money that they simply cannot spare.

These numbers indicate the need to partner with a healthcare executive search firm like Merraine Group®. Using an internal team to find executive level talent sets them up for failure. This work takes years of steady, meticulous effort and a singular devotion to nurturing relationships with c-level talent. In-house healthcare recruiters are simply too busy with too many other open roles to specialize in, making it much harder for them to devote the time necessary to improve your hire and retention numbers.

Creates a more diverse candidate pool

Healthcare executive search firms like Merraine Group® have begun to see cracks in the glass ceilings women experience when moving up the ladder in their healthcare careers. This year, women have quietly gained a foothold on the c-suite at a 26% higher rate than 2021, according to one report. Yet we still have lots of work to do, as one-fifth of those outgoing CEOs were women, striking a blow at healthcare recruiters working diligently to diversify these top spots. Those numbers don’t even reflect the fact that more than 89% of hospital CEOs are white and male. Given that only 60% of the general population is white, it’s clear our work to diversify the upper echelon of healthcare is a long way from being complete.

Merraine Group®, a woman-owned business, knows that healthcare diversity recruiting is the secret to the success of your entire organization. There is ample data supporting our work, correlating patient outcomes with greater cultural similarities between your caregivers and your customers. We believe this work is so critical in the healthcare space that we have created a Diversity Practice Group devoted to ensuring the success of your DEI initiatives. Together, this team delivers on our promise of a more diverse and inclusive staff from the c-suite to the front lines at your organization.

We encourage you to start the healthcare diversity recruiting conversation with Alfred Hankins, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Merraine Group, 845-405-8750 or alfred@merraine.com.

Why Should Your Healthcare Organization Work with Merraine Group®?

We know you have a handful of highly qualified executive search recruiters to consider. Our team would like the opportunity to show you why more than 600 hospitals and healthcare organizations have turned to our firm to conduct their healthcare executive search processes.

Merraine Group® is the country’s largest contingency healthcare executive search firm. For more than two decades, we have built our candidate talent pipelines, building our successes one hospital and one key executive and physician leader at a time. The proof of our work comes from the fact that most of our new clients and candidates come from word of mouth. We’ve quietly been building our reputation without splashy pay-to-play advertising. But the visionary candidates that matter to your business know our work well and take our calls.

Contact the Healthcare Recruiters at Merraine Group® Today!

We’d like to invite you to start a conversation with our team. We’re proud of our track record of success. How can we help you meet your goals? Contact us at info@merraine.com or 845-290-1900 today.