FORUM HEALTH Doctor's specialty: recruiting specialists

Tod's director finds ways to attract in-demand pediatricians to the Valley.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Looking for a tour guide who knows what's great about the Mahoning Valley? The medical director of Forum Health Tod Children's Hospital is a good bet.
Dr. Robert Felter is up on all the best golf courses and has the Youngstown Symphony and Playhouse schedules at his fingertips. He knows when the tulips are at their peak at Mill Creek Park and can map out the best routes to all the Cleveland and Pittsburgh sporting events.
He has to.
A big part of Dr. Felter's job is recruiting hard-to-find, in-demand pediatric medical specialists to serve the region's youngest patients.
There's a critical, nationwide shortage of pediatric specialists, he said, and that makes the task tougher.
"When you have only a few, the ones who are available are going to be very attractive to any place that needs them. If they're looking at a job in southern California or Florida or the North Carolina coast vs. Youngstown, Ohio, we're at little bit of a deficit," he said with a grin.
The hardest part, Dr. Felter said, is getting the specialists interested enough to come for an interview. Often they come because they have a family connection in the area, they had their medical training in the region or they're from somewhere in the Midwest or Northeast.
"If I can get them here, they get the show, and there's plenty that can be sold," he said. "Recruiting is an art. You find out what they like."
He sells the Valley as a good place to rear a family, with plenty of cultural opportunities and four major professional sports teams nearby. When he finds out that a prospect has a special interest, he hones in on that.
"And if there's a spouse, you have to sell the spouse," he said, recalling a trip to a Columbiana horse farm he arranged recently for the pleasure of a doctor's equestrian wife.
Competitive salaries and Tod's affiliations with Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland and the North East Ohio Universities College of Medicine are also perks he uses to woo candidates who typically must decide among several job offers.
Prize recruit
Dr. Lawrence L. Haber, director of pediatric orthopedics at Tod, is one of Dr. Felter's prize recruits.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. Haber came to the area five years ago after a medical residency and internship in Virginia. Dr. Haber says he's extremely busy as the only pediatric orthopedist in a five-county area -- he sees 5,000 to 6,000 young patients a year.
Besides broken bones and other childhood injuries, Dr. Haber said he sees many children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and scoliosis and some with birth-related problems such as club feet.
He chose Tod Children's, he said, because he liked the area and believed the staff and administration at Forum would support him in his efforts to build an excellent pediatric orthopedics program there.
Dr. Haber has an interest in teaching, so he was intrigued by Tod's affiliation with NEOUCOM and with Rainbow, a connection that allows him to teach at Case Western Reserve University. In addition to his busy patient schedule, he's an assistant professor at both medical schools.
The challenge of starting on the ground floor in a new program was the chief selling point for Dr. Gerhard Perz, director of pediatric emergency medicine at Tod. He interviewed with four or five prospective employers but decided on the Youngstown facility because he was excited about the prospect of setting up a new pediatric emergency department.
Dr. Perz grew up in New York City but took some of his medical training in Akron, so he was already comfortable in Northeast Ohio when he came here in 1995. He said pediatric emergency physicians are hard to find, but his department is fully staffed right now with three full-time specialists and one part time.
Dr. Marsha Stein, a pediatric radiologist and a Boston native, said she came to Youngstown first in 1992 because there were jobs here for herself and for her husband, also a radiologist. There were many job offers open to each of them then, she explained, but few places had two appropriate openings.
The couple eventually moved to Pittsburgh and began working there, but she decided to return to Youngstown in October 2002 to serve as director of the Pediatric Radiology Department at Tod.
For Dr. Stein, the hospital's willingness to invest more than $1 million in new, digital equipment for her and another doctor in the department was a big selling point. The equipment allows the radiologists to read X-rays and other test results at home, 24 hours a day, and the hospital even installed emergency generators at the doctors' homes in case of a power outage.
Dr. Felter said Tod previously had a contract with Pittsburgh Children's Hospital for radiology services, but the agreement was about to expire when he recruited Dr. Stein and her associate, Dr. Brian Morley, also a pediatric radiologist.
"Finding them was like a gift from heaven," he said. "Without radiology, the whole hospital closes down."
He's working hard now to fill openings for two other crucial specialists. He needs another pediatric orthopedist and a pediatric surgeon.
Differences in treating children
Many specialists trained in treating adults refuse or resist treating children for liability reasons, Dr. Felter said, because they are not familiar with children's ailments, which are often very different than adults'.
Dr. Stein agreed. She said she's seen minor children's ailments misdiagnosed as major problems and seen major problems overlooked by physicians more accustomed to dealing with adults.
Recently, for example, she saw a child whom an adult radiologist had diagnosed with a large tumor, but the problem turned out to be a simple and easily treatable infection. "When I think of all the heartache those parents went through," she said.
Having pediatric specialists based in the Valley is important for the community, Dr. Felter said, because it keeps health-care dollars here, and the medical professionals benefit the area by living here, in most cases.
Finally, from a personal standpoint, it's much easier for parents and families of sick children when they don't have to travel an hour or more for treatment.
Recruiting is costly
But recruiting specialists and keeping them here is costly. While pediatric specialists generally earn less than adult specialists, Dr. Felter said Tod doctors he's recruited typically earn between $100,000 and $250,000 a year.
"We have to offer the higher salaries here because people aren't coming to Youngstown for the beach or the mountains," he quipped. "We have to offer a competitive salary, and sometimes even a little bit more to get them here. And they're not going to start at $80,000 and work up to $250,000. In the hard-to-find specialties, they're going to want to start at that top figure."
Dr. Felter said Tod Children's uses some of the proceeds it receives yearly from the Children's Miracle Network Celebration to help pay new doctors' salaries, especially in the first year. The nationwide telethon, which benefits 170 hospitals across the country, will be televised all day today on Channel 21-WYTV.
One more, less tangible perk the Valley can offer pediatric specialists is a pleasant, friendly atmosphere to work in, he said. When a prospective recruit visits the area he tries to arrange lunches or dinners with other medical professionals so the newcomer can see how they relate to one another as colleagues.
"We are a smaller children's hospital. We're not huge with a national reputation, but we have a good reputation, and we give excellent care," Dr. Felter said. "We're a kinder, gentler kind of place. Sometimes the bigger the hospital, the more politics you run into. It's not that kind of dog-eat-dog world here."
vinarsky@vindy.com