Good morning, all! I deal in statistics almost all day long (in one way or another), and I just discovered one that is kind of interesting to me.
In 2010, one out of every five doctors we extended recruiting agreements to for my hospital company was a D.O. instead of an MD.
I’ve been here 7 years…the first 2 years, I’d never even heard of a DO, because I didn’t see a single contract for one. There were a smattering of DO’s across the next 3 years…a handful more in 2009…but 2010 took a huge leap forward, and now we’re looking at about 20% of our recruits coming from osteopathic programs.
I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for that, but going from almost zero presence to a 20% presence is pretty substantial.
If you’re wondering–yes, most of them are in primary care, but there is an emerging population of other specialties as well (OBGYN, endocrinology, surgery, maternal/fetal medicine, oncology, etc.)
My team only deals with recruited physicians who are not actually employed by the hospitals, but I would imagine that the numbers may actually be higher on the employment side, because so many hospitalists and ER doctors are employed now…
(Again, this is just a stat for the company I work for–not representative of everyone, by any means.)
The drastic increase was kind of interesting to me. Thought it might be kind of interesting to someone else. 
Have a great Monday!
- carrieliz Said:
In 2010, one out of every five doctors we extended recruiting agreements to for my hospital company was a D.O. instead of an MD.
I've been here 7 years...the first 2 years, I'd never even heard of a DO, because I didn't see a single contract for one. There were a smattering of DO's across the next 3 years...a handful more in 2009...but 2010 took a huge leap forward, and now we're looking at about 20% of our recruits coming from osteopathic programs.
I'm sure there are a variety of reasons for that, but going from almost zero presence to a 20% presence is pretty substantial.
If you're wondering--yes, most of them are in primary care, but there is an emerging population of other specialties as well (OBGYN, endocrinology, surgery, maternal/fetal medicine, oncology, etc.)
My team only deals with recruited physicians who are not actually employed by the hospitals, but I would imagine that the numbers may actually be higher on the employment side, because so many hospitalists and ER doctors are employed now...
(Again, this is just a stat for the company I work for--not representative of everyone, by any means.)
The drastic increase was kind of interesting to me. Thought it might be kind of interesting to someone else.
Have a great Monday!
It is also a direct result of the growth of new DO schools, new campuses for existing DO schools, and expansion of seats in existing schools. DO schools now graduate between more than 1 in 5 new doctors and soon will be 1 in 4. And as I like to always point out the growth of the DO applicant pool, historically always lagging behind MD, has shot passed the allopathic programs growing at a much faster rate than the growth of DO seats.
For an oldster like me who will probably take the DO route, this is good news. Some questions:
Do you have any stats on international physician numbers.
Does your organization recruit for international positions?
I am interested in what DO employment outside the U.S. because international health is where I would like to work (my preferences are for Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa).
Hi, Datsa–I am glad that you find the news encouraging, as that was certainly my purpose for posting it.
Sorry–but I don’t have any international information for my company, because we don’t recruit physicians internationally. (We do have some hospitals in England, but we don’t administer recruiting agreements in the same way there.)
So unfortunately, I can’t give you any global data, but maybe someone else has access to that info on here?
Like Gonnif said, though–the explosive increase in graduates of DO programs doesn’t seem to be slowing down…and I would imagine this trend will only continue to grow.
At some point, the international community will have to find a way to recognize graduates from these schools (those who don’t already), because the curriculum now so closely mirrors our allopathic programs–it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.