How ChenMed Uses AI Agents to Speed Up Physician Recruiting

The Challenge

ChenMed is a growing network of senior medical centers, and its care model is physician-led: every center needs primary care physicians to lead patient care. That makes physicians the TA team's top priority, and they are among the hardest hires in healthcare. Jeff Battinus, who leads talent attraction and selection at ChenMed, brings 22 years of healthcare recruiting to that work, including building the provider recruiting function at Optum.

At ChenMed, the problem was finding time for physician recruiting. Each center also depends on medical assistants, front-desk care facilitators, and membership growth consultants, and those high-volume roles draw a steady flow of applicants who all need a screen. Recruiters were spending their days on inbound applicants instead of on physicians.

• Inbound screening took hours that physician recruiting needed. Every screening call for a high-volume role was time a recruiter couldn't spend finding and courting primary care physicians.

• Physician roles leaned on costly staffing spend. Without time to work back through past applicants in Workday or build pipeline of their own, hard-to-fill physician roles often meant paying outside staffing firms.

• Screening could only happen during business hours. Candidates apply around the clock, often on nights and weekends, but a phone screen had to wait until recruiters were back at work.

Jeff also wants hiring to feel easier for the people going through it, especially clinicians with demanding schedules.

"My ultimate goal is to make sure that clinicians have a happier and healthier experience through the interview process. They meet with [fewer] people faster." – Jeff Battinus, Vice President, Talent Attraction & Selection, ChenMed

See why healthcare's leading talent acquisition teams recruit with Take2. Book a demo →

WATCH: How ChenMed is Building an Agentic Recruiting Function

Jeff Battinus, Vice President, Talent Attraction & Selection at ChenMed, and Take2 co-founder Yaniv Shimoni went on the ASHHRA podcast to talk through how ChenMed is building an agentic recruiting function.

The Solution

Why Take2

Jeff had already put just about every AI recruiting vendor through its paces at his previous organization, Dental Care Alliance.

"We did an extensive evaluation of vendors. Take2 was head and shoulders above the rest with both the technology and the customer service." – Jeff Battinus

The choice paid off at DCA, where Jeff says:

"The [AI] interviewer alone saved [DCA] seven figures." – Jeff Battinus

When he joined ChenMed, he brought Take2 with him.

His test for vendors is simple: peel back one layer and see if there's an actual agent underneath. Plenty of the large recruiting platforms, he says, have taken old processes and added an AI label. Take2's agents do the work themselves, and Take2 builds only for healthcare.

Take2 deploys a network of fully autonomous AI agents that handle the manual, time-consuming work recruiters shouldn't have to do – sourcing candidates, conducting phone screens, scheduling interviews, running reference checks, and verifying licensure. Every agent is trained exclusively on healthcare roles, so it understands clinical vernacular, certifications, licensure requirements, and the regulatory environment that shapes every hire.

"AI replaces the hands, not the head or the heart." – Jeff Battinus

What ChenMed deployed

Jeff had a clear vision for where he wanted recruiting to go at ChenMed: an agentic recruiting function, where AI agents take on the manual work and recruiters spend their time with the best candidates. It started with a simple question.

"I thought, 'What if I could automate all the things I hate doing in recruiting?' Reviewing resumes, doing redundant phone screenings – pulling that away from my recruiters." – Jeff Battinus

Jeff's rule for where to start is to look at where recruiters spend most of their time – intakes, interviews, sourcing, or scheduling. At ChenMed, that pointed to two jobs: take inbound screening off recruiters' plates, and give them a sourcing agent built for physician searches.

• An AI Sourcer that finds physicians. Recruiters tell the AI Sourcer which physician roles to fill and what a strong candidate looks like, and it searches Take2's proprietary clinician database along with third-party sources – physicians ChenMed's recruiters may not have otherwise reached.

• Past applicants brought back into play. The AI Sourcer re-activates past applicants in Workday by email and text, starting with qualified candidates who already know ChenMed, so physician searches don't start from zero.

• An AI Interviewer that reaches applicants the moment they apply. Every applicant gets a text message invitation to a screening call right away and can take it whenever it suits them – removing scheduling delays that lose candidates in competitive markets.

• Role-specific screens from the front desk to physicians. Take2 built separate interviews for medical assistants, care facilitators, membership growth consultants, and physicians, each designed around what that role actually requires. Where a role calls for it, the interviewer is also multilingual and checks Spanish and Haitian Creole proficiency.

• License verification before candidates move forward. The AI Verifier checks clinical licenses during hiring, so recruiters aren't confirming credentials by hand.

• Results that flow straight into Workday. Each completed screen sends a summary scorecard, transcript, and recording into Workday, where recruiters review candidates and decide who moves forward.

Where it started and where it went

ChenMed started with medical assistants and front-desk care facilitators, where the screening load was heaviest, to give recruiters their time back. With high-volume screening running, it extended the AI Interviewer to membership growth consultants and physicians, and put the AI Sourcer to work on its hardest physician searches.

"I had a vision two years ago and I thought it was totally impossible. We've been able to do it [at] a breakneck pace with Take2." – Jeff Battinus

See why healthcare's leading talent acquisition teams recruit with Take2. Book a demo →

The Results

ChenMed saw the impact within weeks of going live, and the agentic recruiting function Jeff had pictured came together faster than he expected.

Recruiters got their time back for physicians. With the AI Interviewer handling inbound screening around the clock, recruiters spend their hours where Jeff wants them: finding, courting, and closing physicians.

Physician searches start with a pipeline. Between past Workday applicants and Take2's clinician database, recruiters open each physician search with candidates already within reach, instead of an empty list and a call to a staffing firm or job board spend. Every physician the AI Sourcer brings in is one ChenMed doesn't pay an outside firm to find.

Hard-to-fill roles started moving. The extra screening capacity carried straight down the funnel, with interviews and offers rising quickly behind it. At hard-to-fill locations that had gone months without an offer, candidates were interviewing and offers were out within weeks.

Screening stopped being a bottleneck. Applicants hear from ChenMed the moment they apply, and the typical applicant finishes their screening call within 40 minutes of applying. Recruiters are no longer limited by how many calls they can fit into a day, so far more applicants get screened each week. That surfaces qualified candidates a resume read alone would miss.

Candidates screen on their own schedule. More than half of ChenMed's screening calls now happen outside business hours, in the evenings and on weekends when working candidates are actually free. Candidates consistently give the AI interview experience a 5 star-rating, in line with what Take2 sees across its other healthcare clients.

Recruiters trust the scores. Recruiters still decide who moves forward, and their choices line up with the scorecards the AI Interviewer provides. The candidates they advanced scored far higher on the AI screen than the ones they passed on, which means the agent is evaluating candidates the way ChenMed's recruiters would. Recruiters can start each day with the strongest candidates and trust they're calling the right people first.

Why It Matters

For ChenMed, physician hiring is a patient-care question first. Every physician seat that fills faster means more seniors get the proactive, physician-led care ChenMed is built around, and the same goes for every medical assistant who starts sooner.

The recruiting savings go to the same place.

"I've been able to pass on savings to direct patient care." – Jeff Battinus

ChenMed now runs agents across the recruiting cycle. The AI Interviewer handles inbound screening, the AI Sourcer builds physician pipeline from past applicants and Take2's clinician database, and the AI Verifier checks licenses before candidates move forward. Each one gives recruiters time back for physician hiring.

Through all of it, Jeff's goal for his own team stays the same: recruiters working at the top of their license, with AI agents taking on the manual workload so people can focus on the work that needs a human touch.

"Take2's agents allow my recruiters to recruit, to sell, to work with their hiring managers, to coach, mentor, and train." – Jeff Battinus