Physician Succession Planning Playbook

What happens when the doctor is no longer in? A physician may leave at any time — at a planned retirement or much earlier due to burnout or leaving the profession — and there often isn’t enough warning to replace them without some disruption. The industry already is feeling the impacts: About one-fourth of today’s physician workforce are between ages 55 and 64, with 17% ages 65 or older. These looming retirements mean the United States will face a shortage of 13,500 to 86,000 physicians by 2036, per AAMC estimates. 

For many years and across many surveys, practice managers’ assessment of the need for physician succession planning has not matched their success at creating succession plans. Other priorities may seem more immediate, but when a physician leaves for any reason, replacing them is an emergency. In a sense, planning to replace a physician should begin the day a new physician is onboarded.