In the medical industry, we are faced with a plethora of jobs to fill and not enough physicians to fill them.   There are going to be times when hiring someone who is missing a qualification or two is acceptable and times when it isn’t.  The team that the physician will be working with should always be consulted before the hire if they are missing some of the listed requirements, as word will get around quickly and you may have some discontent with your team members that is better to deal with before the hire than after.

Years of Experience

Many physician jobs ask for a certain number of years of experience.  In many cases this is because fellow doctors don’t want to work with someone without any real-world experience as this would take additional time away from their practice to train the newcomer in minor things that they would have known if they had been working in the field.  In many cases, any real-world experience would do and the numbers of years that are asked for are more arbitrary than required.  If that is the case, you may be able to hire that young resident with one year under her belt instead of three.

Education

Obviously items like medical degrees are not negotiable – they are the basics that a physician needs in order to work in the medical industry.  However, if you run a Sports medicine clinic and a fellow comes along who is just finishing up his additional education in Sports Medicine, it isn’t going to hurt you to hire him.  Just make sure that all of your patients are told that he is in training until he actually receives his certification.

Experience in a Certain Setting

Some job descriptions call for experience in an HMO or experience in a family practice.  In many cases it doesn’t matter where the physician has acquired the experience, as long as he knows how to properly practice medicine.  An exception to this may be a specialty treatment center like a cancer center or a heart disease clinic – senior staff may be actively recruited who have had experience in such a setting before.  Usually these skills are transferable between settings regardless of what people may think.

Experience with Billing and Administrative Duties

If a physician went through school to get a degree, you can reasonably assume that he will be able to handle invoicing and paperwork.  For the most part physicians don’t like to do paperwork, but the question of whether or not they can do it is a semantic one.  If a physician complains of a genuine lack of skill in this area, most community colleges offer evening courses in administrative functions that you could offer to pay for him to go to.  You may actually be surprised at how such a measure helps out your organization’s bottom line, if it is small enough to have doctors performing administrative functions.