Recruiters create new pathways for administrative talent as demand for workers increases.
By Shelly Strom, Portland Business Journal Contributor
Amanda Morris and her Corvallis-based recruiting team at Samaritan Health Services toil in the trenches looking for talent. Not just for physicians and nurses but everything from C-suite leaders on down to coders and billing assistants.
“Job-seekers focused on marketing, accounting, IT, revenue cycle and other administrative occupations, might not think of health care as a first place to apply,” said Morris, employment director for Samaritan Health Services, which operates five medical centers in the mid-Willamette Valley and on the central Oregon coast.
Morris said applicant pools for nonclinical roles have shrunk in recent years. One of Samaritan’s strategies is heavy community outreach. “Any time we have the opportunity to interact with the public, we always discuss the wide range of opportunities for nonclinical professionals within our system,” Morris said.
Their first choice is to find people with experience and education mirroring the needs of employers. Short of that profile, Samaritan considers qualified candidates, regardless of whether they already have care experience.
“Five years ago applicant pools were broader and we could focus on people with the experience,” she said. Today, however, Morris said hiring managers recognize that people with knowledge bases from other industries can train for the role.
Morris is part of a number of health care recruiters who say they are dealing with a host of dynamics making an already complex hiring environment for nonclinical occupations even more challenging.
Topping the list: a strong economy in which more people are accessing care and driving expansion. Coming in a close second: a government-mandated shift to value-based reimbursements that’s creating jobs and reorienting how health systems deliver care.
In 2018, the sector added one of every seven new jobs created in the United States, according to a report in HealthLeaders last January. That amounted to a total of 346,000 new jobs. At the end of 2018, health care employed more than 16.2 million people — nearly 11 percent of all U.S. jobs. Read more.
