Physician Workforce and Human Resources
Core concepts
Understand physician supply and demand, workforce planning, and the pipeline (medical school, residency, fellowship). Know credentialing and privileging, licensure, board certification, and continuing education/MOC. Grasp employment models (independent, employed, locum tenens, hospitalist), compensation structures (salary, RVU-based, productivity, value-based), and recruitment/retention. Understand human resources fundamentals: job descriptions, performance evaluation, FMLA, ADA, and workplace safety. Know the concepts of burnout, wellness, and professional fulfillment, and the drivers of physician turnover.
Traps
Credentialing verifies qualifications; privileging grants permission to perform specific procedures - they are distinct processes. Board certification is not the same as licensure; licensure is the legal authority to practice, certification is voluntary credentialing. RVU-based compensation incentivizes volume, which may conflict with value-based goals. A common trap is assuming burnout is solely an individual problem - it is heavily driven by system factors (documentation burden, inefficiency, loss of autonomy).
Worked example / rule of thumb
A physician requests privileges for a new procedure. The medical staff must verify training and competence through the credentialing and privileging process before granting privileges - employment status alone does not confer privileges. Rule of thumb: licensure → credentialing → privileging, in that order.
For burnout questions, look for system-level interventions (redesign workflow, reduce documentation burden) rather than individual resilience training alone.