Physician retention is broken. Here's the data to fix it.

Physician retention is broken, and most organizations know it. A new survey of 158 physician recruitment leaders from AAPPR, conducted with CHG Healthcare, finds that fewer than four in ten organizations have a documented retention strategy, even though a nearly identical share are already running retention activities informally. The gap isn't awareness: 74% of organizations without a strategy say they want to build one.

The data points to a "recruitment team paradox." Recruiters and recruitment leaders are often closest to turnover patterns and most involved in day-to-day retention execution, yet they own the overall strategy in only about a quarter of organizations. Executive leadership, meanwhile, has broad input but little hands-on involvement. That disconnect helps explain why unclear ownership is the single most common barrier cited by organizations without a strategy, echoing what separates the practices that successfully retain staff from those that don't.

The survey also surfaces a gap between what's written into formal strategies and what's actually delivered. Flexible scheduling and clinical autonomy are offered more often than they're formally documented, while compensation and work-life balance commitments often outpace what's consistently executed. And while satisfaction and turnover remain the most tracked metrics, only 22% of organizations track cost-per-hire, limiting visibility into the financial return on retention investment. The findings offer a practical roadmap that goes beyond the handful of go-to retention tactics most organizations lean on: assign ownership, align strategy with practice, and start measuring the metrics that connect retention to recruitment performance. Here are the key findings: