Article Written By: Olivia Scott
Residents in Huntingdon County have known for some time that the community needs doctors, it is only recently that they began to consider that doctors also need the community. One objective when hiring is to present the community as an attractive, desirable place to live. For new doctors they want their families to find good schools, adequate housing, friendly neighbors, and other cultural, recreational and social opportunities to fulfill their needs. All this time the main goal of the medical staff, board of trustees, and administration of the JC Blair Memorial Hospital is to send doctors to rural areas. According to them the most successful kind of recruiting involves an effort by the entire community. In this case the past few years saw an unprecedented number of new physicians added to both the hospital staff and the outlying medical centers. Trying to address the improvements made will warrant for the ongoing of the recruitment process. The problem of the US and Huntingdon County in terms of healthcare manpower is quite the same. Huntingdon County is a medically underserved community the papers say. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare made a criterion that will help see if a place is underserved medically. Each community is assigned an Index of Medical Underservice. A rating system is present which has categories like the percentage of the population below poverty level, the percentage of the population over 65, the percentage of infant mortality, and the number of primary care physicians per every thousand members of the population. The definition of primary care physicians are those practicing internal medicine, obstetrics gynecology, family practice, or pediatrics. When the community's IMU adds up to less than 62 points then they are medically underserved. Establishing this fact will then mean that the hospital staff and the board of trustees must come to a consensus on exactly what kinds of health services are needed. Today the recruitment of additional physicians in obstetrics gynecology has been assigned top priority by the hospital. Apart from that they also need more additional family practices and emergency room trained physicians. The community has to show all that they have upon hiring new doctors to work for them. At the same time this will include the advertising in the medical journals which reaches a general audience of physicians throughout the country and in other journals directed at particular specialty. Upon showing interest the doctor is invited to Huntingdon and shown the town. Along with this he is treated to lunch and sometimes to an overnight stay, taken on a tour of the hospital, and introduced to the staff. Also he can learn more about what support services exist at the hospital such as the pathology lab and the new upgraded radiology lab and told that the hospital will make every possible effort to purchase equipment necessary to establish a new specialty. He is also informed that a continuing education program is available through Geisinger Medical Center and that the hospital will help him find office space and appropriate insurance. The recruiters will also have to consider other aspects as well. They might need to talk with the principal of the school their children will be going to, and arrangements made for the children to spend some time there. It might also be good to introduce them to local bankers, who can advise them of mortgage and loan opportunities, and to real estate brokers, who will be apprised of their housing needs.
This Article Has Been Published on Wed, 9 Feb 2011 and Read 326 Times