Patient ties to ambulatory care providers: the concept of provider loyalty.

This paper introduces a cognitive measure of provider loyalty. Correlates of provider loyalty are investigated, and results are presented comparing provider loyalty with traditionally used measures of patient ties for predicting interest in and choice of a new health care provider. Implications for planning and marketing new forms of ambulatory care delivery systems are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

Recruitment assumes you know what you want, so learn from the past.

Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit has a full-time, salaried medical staff. Yet its program to monitor physician recruitment and retention may interest the boards of other hospitals without a large number of salaried physicians that are engaged in recruitment activities. Key to the program is the establishment of a profile of the background characteristics of physician recruits.