Healthcare employers spend considerable time evaluating physician candidates, negotiating compensation and working through the details of an employment agreement. Once the physician accepts the offer, it is understandable that everyone involved considers the search largely finished. The recruiting team has secured the candidate, the hiring manager can begin planning for the new physician’s arrival, and attention shifts to the next vacancy.
The problem is that the physician may still be months away from seeing patients.
The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment released its 2026 benchmarking findings in September, drawing on more than 10,000 physician and advanced practice provider searches active during 2025. The median physician recruiting search took 119 days, while the typical physician began working 229 days after the position was posted. Those figures measure different points in the hiring process and should not be interpreted as a precise 110-day onboarding period for every physician. They do, however, illustrate how much longer the overall hiring process can extend beyond finding someone willing to accept the position.
Licensing, credentialing, privileging and onboarding all contribute to that timeline, and the requirements vary considerably depending on the physician, specialty, employer and state. Some of the work can begin while recruiting is still underway, provided the organization has the information and appropriate approvals to proceed. Other steps cannot be completed until later. An employer that waits until the employment agreement is signed to establish who is responsible for each requirement may discover that the anticipated start date was never particularly realistic.
This has implications for physician recruiting well before an offer is made. When speaking with candidates, recruiters need to understand their availability, existing contractual obligations, state licensing status and whether relocation or other circumstances could affect their start date. Employers also need to involve the people responsible for credentialing and onboarding early enough to identify potential delays. There is little benefit in promising a start date that the organization cannot reasonably support.
The latest AAPPR findings show why realistic timelines matter. Half of the physician searches included in the 2025 benchmarking data remained open at year end, and recruiting difficulty varied significantly by specialty. Endocrinology searches had a median duration of 321 days, compared with 244 days for oncology. These are national benchmarks rather than predictions for any particular vacancy, but they provide useful context when an organization is deciding how far in advance to begin recruiting.
For employers operating outpatient practices, specialty clinics or expanding healthcare services, the distinction between an accepted offer and an operational physician is particularly important. Recruiting plans may be tied to patient access, appointment capacity, new locations or the departure of an existing provider. A physician who accepts an offer but cannot begin practicing for several months may be an entirely successful recruitment outcome, yet the organization still has a workforce gap to manage.
That is why we believe physician recruiting should account for the entire path to a realistic start date, even when the recruiter is not responsible for every administrative step. Understanding a candidate’s circumstances, communicating clearly about the hiring timeline and coordinating with the employer’s internal teams can help identify problems while there is still time to address them.
AlediumHR’s role is to identify and recruit qualified healthcare professionals, but the value of a physician search also depends on understanding when that individual can realistically join the organization. Employers evaluating physician recruiting services should look beyond how quickly a recruiter can produce candidates or secure an accepted offer and consider how well the recruiting process supports the eventual start date.
The contract matters, but the workforce need is not fully addressed until the physician is able to begin work.