Healthcare organizations are facing a recruitment problem that increasingly looks like a workforce-planning and technology challenge: physician searches remain open for months while internal recruitment teams manage heavy workloads and tighter budgets.
The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR) has released its 2026 Physician and Provider Recruitment Benchmarking Report: Search Dynamics and Trends, analyzing more than 10,000 physician and advanced practice provider searches active during 2025 across recruitment teams serving more than 21,000 healthcare locations.
The findings show that overall search volume remained relatively stable, but filling physician positions continues to take substantially longer than filling advanced practice provider roles.
Physician Recruitment Timelines Remain a Major Constraint
The typical healthcare organization managed 100 searches during 2025, down from a peak of 115 in 2023. Individual recruiters, however, continued to carry substantial workloads, managing a median of 36.5 searches compared with 35.6 in 2024.
The difference between physician and APP recruitment timelines was particularly pronounced. Median time-to-fill for APP searches fell from 80 days in 2024 to 65 days in 2025. Physician searches required a median of 119 days.
Some specialties took considerably longer. Endocrinology and metabolism searches had a median time-to-fill of 321 days, followed by oncology at 244 days.
And filling a position is not necessarily the end of the process. The typical physician began work 229 days after the position was posted, reflecting additional requirements such as credentialing, licensing, privileging and onboarding.
For healthcare HR teams, that makes recruitment planning more complex. A vacancy that appears manageable based solely on time-to-fill can translate into a substantially longer period before a clinician is actually available to serve patients.
Recruitment Demand Is Concentrated in Critical Specialties
Family Medicine represented 11.6% of physician searches in 2025, making it the largest category, followed by Hospital Medicine at 10.9% and general OB/GYN at 6.6%.
The proportion of physician searches still open at the end of the year also increased. Half of physician searches remained open as of December 31, 2025, compared with 49% in 2024 and 47% in 2023. Among APP searches, 31.8% remained open.
AAPPR CEO Carey Goryl said the organization’s data indicates that physician shortages are becoming an operational reality, particularly in specialties such as cardiology, urology, neurology, anesthesiology and gastroenterology.
The data provides a more granular view than a general workforce-shortage headline. Recruitment teams can see where vacancies are accumulating, how long searches take and how recruitment resources compare across organizations.
Recruitment Analytics Are Becoming Workforce Infrastructure
The report’s significance extends beyond its individual numbers. Benchmarking is becoming an increasingly important capability for HR leaders managing specialized talent markets.
AAPPR participants receive access to a Benchmarking Portal featuring search tools, time-to-fill and compensation calculators, and customizable benchmarking capabilities. These tools allow recruitment teams to compare their activity against industry data and use the results in workforce planning.
That type of functionality reflects a broader HR technology trend. Talent acquisition teams increasingly rely on analytics to determine where hiring processes are slowing, how much recruitment capacity is required and which positions warrant different sourcing strategies.
Healthcare recruitment has particular reasons to benefit from this approach. Hiring decisions can involve multiple stages after candidate selection, including credential verification, licensing, privileging and onboarding. HR systems that measure only application or offer activity can therefore provide an incomplete picture of workforce availability.
Budget Pressure Adds Another Layer
Recruitment teams are also operating under tighter financial constraints. The median annual budget for internal physician recruitment departments fell 7.4% year over year, from $553,376 in 2024 to $512,500 in 2025.
That combination—persistent vacancies, long hiring cycles and reduced budgets—could increase pressure to improve recruiter productivity through technology.
AI-assisted sourcing, candidate relationship management, recruitment analytics and workflow automation are potential areas of investment. But technology alone cannot resolve shortages in specialized clinical labor. Its more immediate role is to help recruitment teams allocate limited resources, maintain candidate pipelines and identify bottlenecks earlier.
For healthcare organizations, the strategic question is therefore less about automating recruitment wholesale and more about using data and workflow technology to make scarce recruiting capacity more effective.
Market Landscape
Healthcare talent acquisition is becoming increasingly dependent on workforce analytics as organizations contend with specialized labor shortages and lengthy recruitment processes.
The AAPPR findings point toward a market where recruitment benchmarking, applicant tracking, candidate relationship management, compensation intelligence and workforce planning increasingly need to work together. Healthcare organizations can use these systems to understand not only how many positions are open, but how long vacancies are likely to remain unresolved and where recruitment resources are under the greatest pressure.
As physician recruitment becomes more data-intensive, HR technology vendors have an opportunity to connect talent acquisition data with broader workforce planning and operational needs.
The AAPPR report ultimately provides a measurable view of that challenge: recruitment teams are handling substantial search volumes while many physician positions remain open for extended periods. For healthcare HR leaders, better workforce intelligence may become as important as expanding the candidate pipeline.
Top Insights
- Physician searches took a median of 119 days to fill in 2025, creating sustained pressure on healthcare recruitment teams and workforce planning.
- Half of physician searches remained open at year-end, while specialty shortages made positions such as neurology, cardiology and urology particularly difficult.
- Recruiters managed a median 36.5 searches each, highlighting potential demand for analytics, workflow automation and candidate relationship management technology.
- Physician recruitment budgets declined 7.4% year over year, increasing pressure on organizations to improve recruiting efficiency without simply adding resources.
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