AI Trends in Physician Recruitment

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology are quickly changing the shape of medicine.

They’re advancing researchers’ abilities to detect, understand and treat disease, streamline administrative processes and complement physicians in delivering a higher level of care.

But the impacts of this technology aren’t limited to the realms of care or administration — it’s also impacting physician recruitment.

With physician shortages across the United States, more AI tools are being implemented into health systems to streamline recruitment processes and reduce administrative burden for healthcare recruiters.

While certain AI applications can improve efficiency, it’s not a perfect solution. Successful physician recruitment strategies still remain in a deeply relationship-driven and human-centered process for finding, placing and maintaining the right physicians. AI is seen as a tool to be used by professionals, not a replacement for them.

In this journal, we’ll cover how AI is being used in physician recruitment, what the future of these tools might look like and how you can best use these tools while maintaining a human-centric approach to building relationships with physicians and clinicians.

At PS&D, we partner with clinics and health systems nationwide, recruiting across all specialties. Our success in finding the right people for the right roles is grounded in a relationship-driven approach, one that embraces technological efficiencies without ever losing sight of the people at the center of what we do.

Discover how PS&D supports healthcare organizations in achieving recruitment success.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Currently Being Used in Physician Recruitment

Given their vast day-to-day responsibilities and the challenges created by the ongoing physician shortage, recruiters are busier than ever. To find the highest-quality applicants as efficiently as possible, many recruiting teams are adopting AI tools designed to alleviate administrative work and free up valuable time and resources.

While this technology is evolving rapidly, today’s AI recruitment tools are primarily being used by recruiting teams to support:

• Machine Learning-Driven Data Assessment
• Candidate Sourcing
• Resume Screening
• Chatbot Interactions
• Predictive Analytics
• Skill Assessment

Time-saving activities are crucial to recruiting teams, particularly when it comes to the more repetitive aspects of the role, like resume screening and interviewing scheduling.

Many teams have started using AI chatbots to engage with candidates quickly and to answer commonly asked questions, giving them more time to devote to high-priority activities.

Artificial intelligence is also being introduced in recruitment workflows.

In this capacity, AI is being used to “streamline almost every stage of the talent management and development process, from analyzing resumes to creating offer packages” so recruiters can focus more of their efforts on direct engagement with the candidates who have successfully earned a place deeper in the recruiting process.

Proponents of these AI tools find they support recruiting teams in getting an “objective evaluation of candidates by focusing on skills, experience and other predefined criteria,” so long as they are properly designed to “reduce the risk of human bias” and support a more meritocratic hiring process.

However, critics of these tools have also observed that dependence on AI algorithms in the recruitment process potentially “introduces risks of bias, empathy erosion, and depersonalization, necessitating human oversight, transparent disclosure, and rigorous validation to ensure ethical, equitable, and trustworthy hiring.”

Similarly, recruitment features like candidate matching can be helpful but, due to risks like unintentional bias, are still no replacement for human evaluation and identification of ideal candidates.

The future of AI in the recruiting process will be likely shaped by the recruiters and candidates using these tools, as their experiences will inform how to use these applications fairly and effectively.

Looking Ahead: The Evolution of AI and Physician Recruitment

More “Responsible Design"

The future of AI in physician recruitment hinges on the concept of responsible design.

According to IBM, responsible AI design is “a socio-technical practice that brings together people, processes, tools and governance. It requires organizations to consider the full lifecycle of AI systems, from data collection and model development to deployment, monitoring and improvement. It also requires attention to the broader effects of AI on individuals, organizations, society and the environment.”

This requires organizations to think deeply about the “why, how and what” of AI use in its systems to define a unique “set of principles that help guide the design, development, deployment and use of AI.”

Providence, PS&D’s parent organization, was the first U.S. health care system to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics in 2024, and has also been proactive in applying discernment practices, integrating ethical guidelines, providing ethics consultations and continuing research on AI.

Creating these principles helps promote transparency around data use, clarifies what tasks AI can be responsible for and sets realistic expectations for what AI is actually capable of within the organization.

Once these definitions are in place, AI recruiting experts recommend partnering with “ethical AI” vendors to help organizations integrate tools that can be personalized to address their unique pain points.

This helps create trust within the organization and encourages teams to embrace these tools, evaluate their worth and tackle their workloads more efficiently.

An Increase in Sophistication

Another hope for the future of AI in physician recruitment tools is increased sophistication.

For job seekers, many say the chatbots they’ve interacted with focus largely on behavioral-based questions. This can cause issues for candidates unfamiliar with an AI-driven screening.

Many AI algorithms favor answers that contain specific data points and a level of specificity that might not pertain to each individual role recruiters are screening for.

The hope is as these tools become more sophisticated, they can adapt to the important variables of each role. And with increasing competition within the physician recruitment space, this sophistication becomes more important than ever as organizations cannot afford a poor, untailored first impression with potential candidates.

Typically, the only way to increase the sophistication of these tools is by giving them more data to evaluate and learn from. This is where internal teams can have a big impact on the recruiting experience.

To create a better experience for candidates, some experts recommend to “pretend you're applying for a job at your own practice and go through the entire process. You'll probably see some stuff you don't like that you want to change.”

These experiences will help inform professionals at all levels of healthcare how their teams and candidates are experiencing these AI tools, and will hopefully lead to more education, training and overall improvement of these systems.

More Training for Recruiters and Physicians

New tools mean new opportunities to provide training. As referenced, communicating with AI is different from communicating with a human.

Not only are candidates responsible for knowing how to appeal to recruiters, they need to understand how to appeal to the algorithm.

“Physicians must now navigate not just bureaucracies but interfaces” says Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA. “If companies want to attract the best physician talent, they must ensure that the first human touchpoint is actually human. Otherwise, they risk alienating the very professionals whose empathy and discernment they claim to value.”

This, of course, requires transparency during different phases and interactions of the recruiting and hiring process, and it also may require additional training for recruiters to help physicians best articulate their abilities to humans and AI.

As is often the case with process improvement, the more relevant data there is to work with, the easier it will be to know what actions need to be taken for the future.

Continued Growth in Actionable Data

While not specific to the hiring process itself, one useful role AI may play in the future of physician recruitment is providing actionable data to help recruiting teams understand why they're not filling certain positions and how to improve their value proposition.

These data sets can give increased clarity around where candidates are dropping off, and help teams improve job descriptions, interview scheduling or other factors that can help increase close rates.

No matter what tools, data or processes recruiters use, the bottom line is that creating a great human-to-human experience is what will help everyone involved achieve their intended goals.

Promoting a person-centered approach while embracing the right technological advancements is possible. We’ve done it, and we can show you how.

Maintaining a Human-Centric Approach for Long-Term Success: Placement Sustainability, Partner Satisfaction and Continuity of Care

Despite recent surveys claiming “99% of hiring managers used AI in some capacity for the hiring process,“ 93% of those same managers agreed that “it is no substitute for humans in the hiring process.”

That’s likely because hiring is a distinct, relationship-driven process. Physician recruitment is that much more unique. The goal is not just to find and hire the best physicians, but also to retain them for the betterment of overall community health.

Long-term placement means greater continuity of care for patients, and increased stability for health systems.

This means finding the “right” candidate for a role far outweighs finding a quick or easy hire, which can sometimes be at odds with many AI and machine learning tools designed for recruiting purposes.

High-quality, concierge-level physician recruitment requires recruiters to truly understand the goals of their partners and their candidates. This necessitates one-on-one, human-to-human interactions to successfully place candidates.

We believe it’s important to focus on efficiency over abdication, and human oversight is key in ensuring that using AI in physician recruitment reduces bias, produces positive outcomes and helps to keep the right physicians in the right roles.

In the care process, patients expect empathy from their caregivers. In the recruiting process, candidates expect the same.

There’s an opportunity for creative and forward-thinking teams to implement an “Empathy Infrastructure” in their recruiting process where “empathy can be systematically cultivated, scaled, and measured” for the benefit of patients and for physicians, especially as more technology is integrated into the recruiting process.

Again, AI is not a replacement for recruiters. It’s a tool designed to support them. At PS&D, we’ve developed a process that embraces technology while supporting health systems in finding, placing and maintaining the best physician candidates.

Contact us today to learn how we can help you make matches that last.