Excellence in Healthcare: Rachelle Hobson of Providence Health & Services

In 2011, Rachelle Hobson was pursuing a degree in business administration with a focus in sports marketing. But something just didn’t feel right.

“As I was going through my classes, I kept feeling like, while I enjoy sports, selling somebody a family four-pack of tickets to a basketball game isn’t really doing the community or society any greater good.”

But when she started as a marketing intern with Providence Health & Services, something clicked.

An Aha Moment

“It was an aha moment for me,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Here’s an occupation where I am directly impacting the care that patients receive and can do so in a way where I am insuring that the right providers are in the right place at the right time, and that our patients are receiving the best care possible. That is a direct benefit to society’.”

Five years later, she’s still at it—now as a Provider Recruiter for Providence Health & Services.

“It’s very rewarding to be able to help in the physician recruiting process,” she says. “Most of the physicians I speak with are really top-notch, high-quality people. So that aspect of it is fun as well—to be able to chat with people and help them. A lot of times it’s their first job search, so I’m providing guidance and advice on how to go about the process and hopefully find them a great match within our Providence system.”

Providence—Caring for the Underserved

Providence Health & Services is the third largest not-for-profit health system in the United States, servicing communities—especially for those who are poor and vulnerable—across Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.

“We were founded by the Sisters of Providence in 1859,” says Hobson, “so we really are committed to caring for those in need. We do a tremendous amount of charity care in all of our regions and are looking for physicians who resonate with our mission—physicians who are kind, compassionate, and who are looking to serve the underserved in all of the communities that we operate our hospitals in.”

While Providence is a Catholic healthcare organization, they are welcoming to physicians of all religions.

At present, Hobson recruits for Providence’s six California hospitals in Burbank, Mission Hills, Tarzana, Torrance, San Pedro, and Santa Monica. Because Southern California is such a beautiful area, Hobson fields a lot of applications from hopeful physician candidates.

“A lot of people want to live and work in the Los Angeles area,” says Hobson, “Because of that, we’re able to be a lot more selective in who we interview and who we pursue.”

Finding Physician Candidates with PhysEmp

Still, Hobson says her team finds PhysEmp.com helpful in finding candidates.

“We have all of our jobs posted on PhysEmp.com, so I absolutely get job applications from PhysEmp—the proactive job seekers,” she says. “And we utilize the Active Physicians Database when we need some really, really specific specialists that are hard to come by, even for Los Angeles. For example, pediatric neurologistists—there just aren’t that many pediatric neurologists in the country! So using the database in PhysEmp to try and source passive job seekers that are interested in the California area can be very helpful.”

When asked what makes Providence a great place to work, Hobson says it’s the company mission:

“A lot of companies will reference their mission, but that’s really about it, whereas the mission of Providence is integrated on a daily basis and to not only our business operations, but the way we conduct meetings and the way that hopefully we’re practicing medicine,” says Hobson. “So we’re really looking for physicians who align with our mission, and it resonates with them.”

Integrated Patient Care & Education

Beyond caring for patients in need, Providence is committed to educating members of their community so they don’t get sick in the first place.

“We really are committed to integrated and proactive healthcare,” says Hobson. “It’s not just treating patients when they come to our hospitals, but it’s providing them resources—whether it’s through primary care services, or a nursing line, or simply information to be proactive in their own health. One of our taglines is to ‘create healthier communities together,’ so, we provide resources to patients as well as our providers to make sure that we’re working toward really creating a healthier community as a whole.”

Providence is also progressive in terms of technology and information systems. They were named a “Most Wired” healthcare system winner by the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum and the College of Healthcare Information Management in 2015. Providence’s use of “MyChart,” a single electronic health record across all patient care facilities, was a primary factor in the award selection.

“If patients have a question or a concern, they’re able to type a quick email to their doctor and typically get a response pretty fast, within a day or two,” says Hobson. “Obviously, for more urgent issues, they need to call. But it also has all of the patient’s after-visit summaries in there. They have their immunization records in one place, easily accessible from a computer, wherever they are.”

A Collaborative Work Environment

Hobson makes it clear that, at Providence, all recruiters are in-house.

“We’re really trying to find that alignment and the best match for Providence. I’m a salaried employee; I don’t receive any more or less money if I recruit 100 doctors or zero doctors. It creates a good environment to ensure that we really are finding the best providers for our system.”

When she’s not helping talented physicians find new careers with Providence, Hobson enjoys hiking and biking with friends in the beautiful parks of Oregon. That is, if she’s not at school or studying for her MBA in Healthcare.

Once she has that degree, there’s no telling what great things she’ll do for Providence.