Physician Recruitment Metrics to Review Before 2027

Before next year's hiring plan takes shape, this year's offers, hires, and departures already have a lot to say about it. The physician recruitment metrics you track all year can tell you what to keep, what to fix, and where the plan needs more room.

Hospital turnover data shows why the review matters. In the 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, 74% of participating hospitals reported a formal retention strategy, yet 27.6% had no measurable turnover-reduction goal. Hospitals set out to lower turnover by 2.6% in 2025, and it rose 0.2% instead.

A strategy on paper and the results on the ground can drift apart quietly. Use this guide to run a year-end recruitment review of physician and advanced practice clinician (APC) hiring, understand why searches ran longer than planned, and walk into 2027 planning with four focused questions.

What recruitment metrics should healthcare organizations review at year-end?

Start with seven: time to fill, time to first candidate engagement, offer acceptance rate, starts versus signed contracts, first-year retention, turnover by role and tenure, and source of hire. Together, they show where searches slowed, where candidates dropped out, and whether the people you hired stayed.

Pull each one by specialty and by role type, with physicians and APCs reported separately. A single organization-wide average can hide the one search that stalled for months.

• ‍Time to fill. The days from an approved role to a signed contract. Compare it by specialty, since a family medicine search and a neurosurgery search rarely move at the same pace.‍
• Time to first candidate engagement. How long it took for the first qualified candidate to enter an active conversation. A slow start often points to an unclear posting, a narrow outreach plan, or an offer that isn't landing.‍
• Offer acceptance rate. Offers accepted divided by offers extended. Record the reason behind every decline, because declines are direct feedback on compensation, call, schedule, or location.‍
• Starts versus signed contracts. A role is filled when the provider starts. Track how many signed physicians and APCs actually started, and how long the gap between signature and start ran.‍
• First-year retention. The share of new physicians and APCs still with you 12 months after their start date.‍
• Turnover by role and tenure. Separate physicians from APCs, and new hires from tenured providers, so you can see exactly where departures cluster.‍
• Source of hire. Where each hire came from (referrals, residency and fellowship pipelines, job postings, outside search partners) and which sources produced providers who stayed.

Why should you measure retention alongside hiring?

A hire who leaves within the first year sends you back to the start of the search, often with a coverage gap in between. Pairing hiring metrics with retention shows whether this year's recruitment built stable coverage or only filled the schedule for a few months.

Hospital-wide data shows how quickly early departures add up. NSI found that 29.5% of all new hospital hires left within a year, and employees with less than two years of service made up 56.8% of hospital separations. Those figures cover all hospital employees rather than physicians alone, so check the same pattern against your own physician and APC data.

Your departures also become someone else's hires. In The Medicus Firm's 2026 Compensation and Placement Summary, providers already in practice accounted for 64.0% of physician and APC placements in 2025. When most new hires come from another organization's team, retention becomes part of every growth plan.

When you review early departures, look for:

• ‍Timing. Did people leave before starting, during onboarding, or after their first year?‍
• Fit with the offer. Did schedule, call, support staff, and workload match what was described during recruitment?‍
• Source. Did certain recruitment sources produce providers who stayed longer than others?

Why do physician searches take longer than expected?

Most delays trace back to a handful of causes: specialty-specific market conditions, offers that haven't kept pace with the market, postings that leave out key details, crowded candidate inboxes, relocation decisions, and internal friction. Your year-end data can show which of these affected your searches most.

Timelines vary widely by specialty

The 2026 Compensation and Placement Summary, which covers physician and APC placements The Medicus Firm completed in 2025, found that time to first candidate engagement ranged from three days in gastroenterology to 27 days in obstetrics and gynecology. That spread happens before a single interview is scheduled.

When you review time to fill, compare each search against others in the same specialty. An organization-wide average will make some searches look slow and others look fast for reasons that have little to do with your process.

Offers can lag a moving market

Physician incentives keep shifting. In the same placement data, the average physician signing bonus reached $47,508, up 30.0% since 2022, while the share of physicians receiving one fell to 83.0% from 87.1% in 2024. An offer built on last year's assumptions may land very differently this year.

APC offers moved in another direction. Average APC salary fell to $132,353, down 4.6% since 2023, and APC signing bonus participation dropped to 57.9% from 83.9% in 2024. Review APC offers against APC data rather than scaling down physician assumptions.

Job postings leave out what candidates want to know

Compensation is the top information physicians (62.8%) and APCs (65.4%) look for in a job ad, according to The Medicus Firm's 2026 National Physician & Healthcare Provider Preference & Insights Survey. A posting without compensation details can slow early conversations while candidates wait for the basics.

Candidates have crowded inboxes

The same survey found that 76.9% of physicians receive three or more job solicitations every week. Outreach that names specifics about the role, the team, and the community has a better chance of standing out than a generic opening.

Relocation decisions take time

Family and personal reasons are the top barrier to changing roles for physicians (46.0%). A spouse's career, a child's school year, or a parent's care can shape the timeline as much as the offer does. Raise these early in conversations, and build that time into the plan.

Unclear role definitions and slow internal approvals

Some delays start inside the organization. A role without settled details (call expectations, APC scope, reporting lines, the expected patient panel) invites rework once candidates start asking questions.

Approval steps for compensation exceptions or offer letters can add days or weeks at the exact point when candidates are comparing options. Map how long each internal step took this year, and decide which ones can move faster in 2027.

What's driving burnout on your current physician and APC teams?

Administrative burden tops the list of burnout contributors for physicians (58.9%), and compensation misaligned with workload leads for APCs (52.1%), according to The Medicus Firm's 2026 National Physician & Healthcare Provider Preference & Insights Survey. Both sit largely within an employer's control, which makes them worth reviewing before you add new positions.

Burnout on today's team shapes next year's hiring plan. In the same survey, 46.1% of physicians experiencing weekly burnout said they were likely or open to changing roles. Each provider who does leave adds another search to the 2027 plan.

The 2026 AHA Health Care Workforce Scan points hospital leaders toward team-based staffing models, redesigned workflows, and a stronger focus on engagement and well-being. For a year-end review, a few practical questions help:

• ‍Administrative load. Where does documentation, inbox, and prior authorization work land, and who supports it?‍
• APC compensation and workload. Does pay reflect current panel sizes, call, and collaboration or supervision duties?‍
• Feedback. What did exit interviews and stay conversations say this year, and what changed as a result?

How should academic medical centers and children's hospitals benchmark recruitment?

Compare against matched peers first, then add measures that reflect the academic mission: teaching, research, and faculty development. A general hospital average will blur the picture for either setting.

For academic medical centers, Vizient's System of CARE Scorecard reports throughput, access, quality, and cost efficiency trends from a rolling four quarters of data, with separate cohorts for academic medical centers and community hospitals. Its latest edition notes that wait times for new patients remain elevated across top-volume specialties, useful context when deciding which faculty searches to prioritize.

For pediatric programs, the Children's Hospital Association's Annual Benchmark Report draws on data from more than 150 pediatric hospitals and collects more than 400 data points, including how staffing models compare with peers. CHA members can use it for strategic planning, budgeting, and benchmarking.

Operating benchmarks cover the clinical side. Faculty hiring also needs academic measures, such as:

• ‍Searches by track and rank. How faculty searches for clinical, research, and educator tracks performed at each academic rank.‍
• Protected academic time. Whether new faculty received the teaching and research time described in their offers.‍
• Mission coverage. Which teaching, research, or fellowship responsibilities went uncovered while a role sat open.‍
• Faculty development. Mentorship and development participation among this year's new faculty, and early signs of how they're settling in.

Conclusion: Turn this year's results into next year's plan

Physician recruitment metrics earn their keep when they change a decision. Time to fill and time to first candidate engagement show where searches slowed, and offer acceptance shows whether your offers kept pace with a market that moved differently for physicians and APCs this year.

Hiring numbers tell half the story. Starts, first-year retention, and turnover by tenure show whether this year's hires stayed, while the burnout drivers on your current team often point to next year's openings before they reach a requisition. For academic medical centers and children's hospitals, matched peer benchmarks and academic measures round out the picture.

Before 2027 budgets and requisitions lock in, bring these four questions to the table:‍

1. ‍Where did our searches slow down, and why? Compare time to first candidate engagement, time to fill, and offer acceptance by specialty and role.‍
2. Did our offers keep pace with the market? Check compensation and signing bonus assumptions for physicians and APCs separately against current data.
3. ‍Who did we hire, and who stayed? Review starts versus signed contracts, first-year retention, and which sources produced providers who stayed.‍
4. What would help our current physicians and APCs stay? Look at burnout drivers, exit feedback, and turnover by tenure before adding new positions.

Partial data can still answer these questions well enough to change a plan. Even a rough look at where searches stalled and who stayed can shift which roles you prioritize, how you build offers, and where retention work belongs in the budget. Starting 2027 from this year's evidence gives each new search a clearer target and a better shot at a hire who stays.

‍

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average time to hire a physician?

It depends on specialty, setting, and market, so a single national number rarely helps. In The Medicus Firm's 2025 placement data, time to first candidate engagement alone ranged from three days in gastroenterology to 27 days in OB/GYN. Your own time to fill by specialty is the most useful planning baseline.

How do you calculate first-year retention for physicians?

Divide the number of physicians and APCs still employed 12 months after their start date by the number who started during that period. Track physicians and APCs separately, and record why anyone who left decided to go.

What's the difference between time to fill and time to first candidate engagement?

Time to fill covers the full search, from an approved role to a signed contract. Time to first candidate engagement measures how quickly the first qualified candidate enters an active conversation. A slow first engagement usually signals a problem early in the search, such as the posting, outreach, or offer.

How often should healthcare organizations review recruitment metrics?

A full review at year-end connects results to the next budget and hiring plan. Checking core metrics quarterly helps a stalled search or a rise in early departures surface before it affects coverage.

Should physicians and APCs be tracked separately?

Yes. Physician and APC markets move differently. In The Medicus Firm's 2025 placement data, physician signing bonuses rose while APC salary and signing bonus participation fell. A combined number can hide a problem in either group.

‍

Sources

1. NSI Nursing Solutions, Inc. 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report. 2026. https://www.nsinursingsolutions.com/Documents/Library/NSI_National_Health_Care_Retention_Report.pdf‍
2. The Medicus Firm. 2026 Compensation and Placement Summary. 2026. https://www.themedicusfirm.com/blog/annual-compensation-and-placement-summary‍
3. The Medicus Firm. 2026 National Physician & Healthcare Provider Preference & Insights Survey. 2026. https://www.themedicusfirm.com/blog/annual-national-physician-healthcare-provider-preference-insights-survey‍
4. Vizient Intelligence. System of CARE Scorecard: Q1 2025 to Q4 2025. Vizient; May 2026. https://www.vizient.com/insights/reports/data-on-the-edge/system-of-care-scorecard-q1-2025-to-q4-2025‍
5. Children's Hospital Association. Annual Benchmark Report. https://www.childrenshospitals.org/content/analytics/product-program/childrens-hospital-annual-benchmark-report