Healthy award wins for Pathology Group

After a successful night at Recruiter’s Awards last month, Colin Cottell met up with the directors to find out the secrets behind the medical
recruiter’s success

L–r: Jason Muller, Louie Evans and Zack Feather

L–r: Jason Muller, Louie Evans and Zack Feather

The dinner jackets have been put away and coffee rather than bubbly is the order of the day. But while life has returned to normal for the three directors of the Pathology Group, the memories of a highly successful night at the Recruiter Awards, supported by Thomas International, remain fresh.

“It was a great night,” says Louie Evans, managing director of Psychiatry People, one of the group’s subsidiaries. And two days on, the true significance of the night’s events when the medical recruiter picked up not one, but two awards, is slowly starting to sink in. “It was almost a pat on the back to say ‘you have got it right’,” says Evans reflectively.

Certainly that was the view of the judges, when they awarded the group its double accolade: Best Health Care/Medical Recruitment Firm and Best Newcomer. The judges praised the expertise of its consultants and its ‘dedicated service’ to clients. And all this on the company’s very first attempt.

In a sparse meeting room, in the company’s offices close to Aldgate East in London’s East End, sits Evans’ colleague Zack Feather, managing director of A&E Agency. Facing Evans is Jason Muller, the group’s tough-talking Aussie operations director.

As befits a newcomer to the industry, which only opened its doors for business in October 2006, the Pathology Group’s story is not a long one. However, that’s not to say the directors lack relevant experience.

In fact, in their first venture into recruitment, all three previously worked together at another medical recruiter, AM Medical, before deciding “after a few lunches” to launch out on their own. “We thought we could make a difference and take advantage of a huge opportunity,” says Evans.

“The medical sector is still identified as underserviced by recruiters and candidate [rather than client] driven,” adds Feather. “We wanted to bring a more executive and professional approach to what was effectively high-street recruitment.”

It’s a path on which numerous recruiters have embarked. So what is it about the Pathology Group, which has catapulted it from “a few telephones and a computer in a windowless cupboard in Covent Garden”, to one with a projected turnover this year of £13m and pre-tax profits of £1.69m?

What is it that has transformed it into a company supplying pathologists and A&E staff to 75 NHS Trusts — more than half the Trusts in the UK? And clinched a three-year contract as a preferred supplier with the NHS for A&E staff throughout the UK? Evans, a former professional footballer with Peterborough, is in no doubt about the reason for the company’s success. “It’s the specialism,” he says. “Being a niche specialist straight away creates a synergy between the locum doctor, the client and the company.” It’s an approach that the company has adopted ever since its first placement with the Pennine Acute NHS Trust, a large trauma Trust in Manchester.

This niche approach is encapsulated by the company’s in-depth knowledge of candidates based on the work of its research team. Its database (some 1,500 strong) contains details of every pathologist in the UK. “We can tell what pathologist works in what hospital, in what capacity and whether they are permanent, locum or covering another member of staff,” says Evans.

This has real advantages for clients, he says. “If a client says ‘We need a pathologist in London to start in the morning with a particular set of skills’, we could automatically pick up those people on our database, and we could be confident that we could provide the best candidate within a day’s turnover time.”

Senior recruitment consultant Adam Bailey concurs. “I could probably tell you the names of every consultant pathologist in the country, simply because we specialise so much in this area, which gives us advantages in the marketplace,” he says.

In another example of ‘going the extra mile’, Evans spent a week in the Harley Street laboratory of DrAndrew Garrimore, an eminent histopathologist [concerned with the changes in tissues caused by disease]. “I did that to get an understanding of what a pathologist does,” Evans explains. This in turn is relayed to staff, so that everyone in the company has the same level of knowledge. “These guys [pathologists] re
incredibly well educated, and they don’t want a someone talking to them on the phone without any understanding of the market,” he says.

It’s a blueprint in which the directors have obvious confidence. In October 2008, the company launched another specialist subsidiary, sychiatry People, which operates along identical lines.

The group is big on networking, attending medical conferences in locations such as Orlando, Florida and Istanbul, and holding its first dinner for
clients and medical professionals last year.

When sourcing candidates for A&E departments in the UK, the A&E Agency, which the company believes is the world’s first agency specialising solely in accident and emergency staff, has created a pool of doctors based on geographical location. This has several advantages for clients, says Evans.

For example, rather than an NHS Trust in Manchester using a doctor based in Devon, A&E aims to source candidates locally. This reduces travelling time, so that not only are positions filled faster, but Trusts also save money by not having to pay travel expenses.

The agency has adopted a proactive and strategic approach to developing business, says Feather. This is based on understanding the needs of A&E departments to hit their targets, particularly the four-hour waiting time for patients from entry to admission. “We go out and see where they have been breaching their targets, and why, so we can work on a long-term basis to meet their future needs,” he says.

This helps Trusts meet their ambitions of achieving Foundation status, adds Muller.

This focus on the customer is valued by Nicki Ryan, A&E directorate manager at Pennine Acute NHS Trust. “They do their very best to fill the requirements we have,” she says. “More than other agencies, they fill our vacancies faster and with better and regular staff.” Ryan also praises A&E’s “full out of hours service”, adding, “the managing director will always respond to you wherever he is in the world”.

Such service clearly hits the spot for clients for NHS clients, with 80% of the group’s business coming from the NHS. That said, the group is picking up increasing business in Australasia, the Middle East and Europe. And all this in less than three years. As a consequence, the number of staff has shot up from three when the three directors set up the business in 2006 to 16 today.

The company puts great store on its relationships with candidates. As Feather explains: “It’s about finding out what the doctor wants to do, where he or she wants to work, and for how long. It’s not about the placement for us. It’s looking at the whole life cycle of a locum doctor.”

It’s the small subtle things that make a difference, adds Evans, citing how all consultants have access to doctors’ pay records. “Rather than putting them on hold when they are busy at work, or transferring them to accountants, the consultant can answer the query immediately,” he says.

High-calibre staff are a key factor, says Muller. The company’s employees are “well educated to graduate level, very polished and professional. They are keen to achieve just the same as us”, he says.

To develop its staff, the company provides tailor-made training for individuals, including a life coach. On joining, each consultant agrees a three-year career plan. Goal orientated, time specific and culminating in a management position, it “almost maps out their career”, says Feather.

The company prefers to promote staff from within rather than bring in managers from outside. This helps to maintain the company’s distinct customer service ethos, explains Evans.

The company’s focus on specialisation is reflected in its training. Professor Bruce Moore, an eminent psychiatrist and a non-executive director of Psychiatry People, recently took staff on a training day. “The management train us up to be proper consultants. They want us to know the market back to front,” says Bailey.

Pathology’s people perspective certainly appears to be bearing fruit. Not one consultant has left in the nearly three years of its existence.

Despite moving offices three times in the last 12 months to accommodate its growth, the upward trajectory of the company shows no sign of slowing.

Indeed, Evans says that within the next two months the next stage of the group’s growth is set to be begin — though he won’t be drawn on the exact details, limiting his comments to “it’s still recruiting doctors”.

But never mind the details; the sense of ambition generated by the three directors is palpable. Feather confidently predicts revenues of £40m to £50m by the end of 2011, and the position of leading provider of medical doctors in the UK.

For a company that began life in a “windowless cupboard” less than three years ago and has now picked up two prestigious accolades, one senses anything is possible.

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