The PS&D Story

More than two decades ago, four Providence employees in Portland, Oregon, threw out the playbook and began hiring physicians in an unprecedented way – as a self-funded, in-house recruiting organization within a 150-year-old health system.

Providence, the third-largest, non-profit health organization in the country, needed a solution to costly, commission-based recruiting agencies. It needed a team to provide a red-carpet recruiting experience for physicians and providers, handling everything from sourcing and marketing to site visits and contracting.

This new venture – Provider Solutions & Development (PS&D) – launched in 2005. It would grow exponentially, forming partnerships with health systems across the country, building a vast candidate database and securing more than 1,400 physician and advanced practice clinician (APC) hires each year.

Fixing the Broken Provider Recruitment Industry

Rachelle Daugherty, PS&D’s Chief Executive and one of PS&D’s earliest employees, says her “why” remains the same today as it was then.

“We set out to fix the broken provider recruitment industry,” she says. “Nothing about the process or experience was working. Hospitals and clinics couldn’t get the providers they needed. Providers couldn’t find the jobs they wanted. And the end result was our communities suffered, because people didn’t have access to care. PS&D changed that landscape by transforming the physician and provider recruitment experience.”

Improving the provider recruitment industry is a multi-layered challenge.

The U.S. is facing a physician shortage of nearly 86,000 doctors in the coming decade as demand continues to grow faster than supply, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

It takes a significant amount of time to fill open positions. An Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment report estimates it takes an average of 111 days to fill an APC role, 180 days to fill a Primary Care role and 259 days to fill a specialty role.

As health systems wait for providers to be hired, they must often turn to costly locum tenens, or temporary, staff. And the rural provider space is particularly challenging. Becker’s Hospital Review estimates that in the last two decades, 104 critical access rural hospitals closed their doors – 37 have shut down since 2020. Wait times to fill openings in rural communities are even longer.

Providers are bombarded with outreach and spam from staffing agencies, as other recruiting firms – where employees are often working on commission to meet quotas – fill positions as fast as they can without regard for long-term fit. This leads to short tenures and frequent job vacancies.

PS&D has operated differently since day one – putting providers’ needs first and focusing on fulfilling individuals, not filling positions.

PS&D’s First External Partnership

A pivotal moment for the team came in 2015, when Island Health, a community hospital in the small, picturesque town of Anacortes, Washington, came to PS&D and asked for help. Lacking the resources to recruit for themselves, they opened three searches with PS&D – two general surgeon positions and one Family Medicine physician role.

Island Health needed a recruiting organization that understood how to find candidates who would see these opportunities as more than just a stepping stone. They needed physicians and APCs who would put down roots and build a life in Anacortes.

“That was when Providence leadership said, ‘Let’s do this,’” Rachelle says. “Here was a community that needed our help. The question was, how were we going to help them? We had a collective realization – Now is the time to provide our expertise and differentiated experience to the industry and fundamentally improve the way it operates.”

Island Health and PS&D came together because we shared similar values: investing in our people, cultivating meaningful relationships and supporting healthy communities. Learn how our partnership continues to thrive today.

“Physician recruitment is about relationships. It’s a people business,” says Elise Cutter, CEO of Island Health. “It’s our relationship with PS&D and their relationship with medical schools, residency programs and physicians. We enjoy our partnership and the success it continues to bring.”

In 2018, PS&D became a limited liability company, or LLC, allowing it to build partnerships with external clients who share our mission to serve all, especially the poor and vulnerable. This led to the launch of our website and job board, which have grown to more than 15,000 monthly job views, and to a candidate network of 1.3 million providers.

The PS&D Difference

PS&D recruiting follows a holistic approach, prioritizing commitment, not commission, and by considering all the factors that go into selecting a long-term match — lifestyle, salary expectations, ideal work environment and more.

Dr. Cara Beatty, chief executive of Providence Clinical Network, Puget Sound, says PS&D has been a gamechanger for Providence as a whole, which employs 34,000 physicians across a seven-state footprint.

“The provider marketplace is so competitive right now, so first and foremost, candidates need to be aware of us. We need them to know about our roles, and to be able to easily connect with us,” Dr. Beatty says. “PS&D recruiters have been amazing, consistently bringing us candidates who are the right fit for our many diverse locations. They truly understand who we are, and they know our teams. Finding the right providers for each community is critical to everything that we do and to ensure great patient care.”

Dr. Brendan Lloyd, chief administrative officer of Providence Clinical Network for Southern California, agrees, and says he has appreciated PS&D’s innovative, collaborative role in recruiting for his region.

“PS&D has been a great resource for me to understand changes in the healthcare landscape and to make sure we’re thinking about recruiting in new ways,” Dr. Lloyd says. “Getting candidate feedback from PS&D has been extremely helpful for us, and we’ve relied on them in that consultative way to help us really hone and craft our approach.”

Lisa Scardina, chief of brand and partner development at PS&D, says our aim has stayed true from the beginning – to put relationships first, both with our partners and providers.

“Walking the journey with the physician and being committed to long-term relationships makes us different,” Lisa says. “It’s about helping people access care and helping doctors find the right job. This has always been the biggest priority for PS&D and is very much alive in the organization today.”

An Innovator and Disruptor

PS&D remains the only provider recruiting organization in the country that is embedded within a large health system. This unique vantage point allows us to apply best practices and learnings across regions and partners, delivering real-world insights in real time and improving recruiting for everyone we serve. Our approach is working, and providers give us high marks in feedback surveys — nearly 97% of the providers we work with report they’d recommend PS&D.

Chief Executive Rachelle Daugherty says she’s just as inspired today as she was in the early days of PS&D.

“I’m incredibly proud of my team and of what we’ve been able to provide to our partners,” Rachelle says. “Through our passion for putting providers’ needs first, we’ve reinvented provider recruitment, and become an innovator and disruptor in this space. The best part is helping to create healthier communities. That’s why we do what we do.”

PS&D Milestones

2005: Providence launches PS&D, with four employees from the Oregon region, to provide recruiting services to Providence ministries across five western states.

2005–2015: Over the next decade, PS&D triples in size to accommodate growth as Providence acquires Swedish, Pacific Medical Centers and Kadlec.

2012–2015: PS&D opens offices in Seattle, Spokane and Richland, Washington.

2015: We form our first external client partnership with Island Health in Washington’s Skagit County.

2016: Growth continues through a merger between Providence Health & Services and St. Joseph Health.

2018: We become an LLC, updating our name from Physician Services & Development to Provider Solutions & Development. With this comes the formation of a board, and the announcement of the launch of our website and job board.

2019: We create a strategic outreach team to expand services to medical residents.

2020: We become a remote-first company and expand our reach nationwide. This change allows us to hire the best recruiting talent from across the country.

2023: In the years following the pandemic, PS&D quadruples its external partnerships, filling a clear need for health systems to outsource provider recruitment. As health systems grapple with high burnout rates, the holistic approach we started with is a key reason for our rapid growth.