What is a CPNA?
A CPNA is the foundation of physician recruitment for a hospital and those physicians in a particular geographical service area. It is the result of careful analyses that provide a clear picture of the number and mix of physicians that a community will need so that recruitment efforts are handled in the most efficient and effective fashion. Kraft Healthcare Consulting provides community physician needs assessments for a variety of hospitals and health systems.
Why do you need a CPNA?
- A hospital is provided with valuable objective information to provide a basis for developing their recruitment goals. This focused goal setting process affords hospitals with the necessary information for future successes.
- By systematically laying out the current physician specialties and age mix that reveals the various surpluses and deficiencies as it relates to the service area, a CPNA should tell you how many primary care physicians are needed along with any specialists that may be below the associated benchmark for that particular field. This detailed information is extremely valuable when making the investment for additional physicians in your community.
- A CPNA is useful for justifying the overall recruitment plan for the hospital Board of Directors, its leadership, and the existing medical staff. Objective, independent data demonstrates the need for additional physicians while alleviating the threat of additional competition to existing physicians in the community.
- Maintaining a current CPNA will assist hospitals with compliance issues as they relate to federal regulatory agencies (OIG, IRS, etc.) as well as the Joint Commission. This is important for any hospital that is contemplating recruiting and retaining additional physicians and establishing any type of financial relationship (income guarantees, employment agreements, medical directorships, call coverage pay, etc.) with that physician. By providing independent documentation of the actual needs of various physician specialties, hospital leadership is able to justify and substantiate such arrangements that may be necessary in order to competitively recruit additional physicians.
- There are varying degrees of CPNAs that range from the very basic benchmarking of physician specialties to a more detailed quantitative analysis of community acuity levels, time studies to document patient wait times, the number of physicians accepting new patients and/or various insurance payors (i.e. Medicaid) as well as conducting physician interviews to glean important information about underlying circumstances that may affect the overall need of the community.
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