Hospitals Market Themselves to Prospective Docs and Nurses

Jennifer Hickey knows that part of the reason the Baptist Health System operates its School of Nursing is to create its own workforce, with herself part of it. And she doesn't mind a bit.

 

"They've been selling me, and I'm sold," said the 35-year-old mother of three who will graduate the school in December as an RN. "They have been, and I have no problem with that."

 

Hickey wasn't sure if she wanted to stay with the system when she first enrolled in the school, which is why she decided to pay for her education out of pocket and with scholarship funds rather than take advantage of the school's loan forgiveness program, which requires six months of post-graduate work for each semester of participation. But after making friends with nurses during her clinicals and hearing the system's benefits subtly touted throughout her education, she's decided to take the loan and stay with the system that educated her.

 

"So I owe Baptist a year, which is where I want to work anyway, so it works out well for me," she said.

 

The School of Nursing is one tool that Baptist uses to recruit and retain quality hospital personnel. Other hospitals are rummaging through their own toolboxes. Across town, the St. Vincent Health System doesn't have its own nursing school, but it does have an LPN program and school of radiology as well as a scholarship and loan agreement with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Nursing. Thanks in part to these, St. Vincent has no vacancies in any clinical positions or the pharmacy and only a three percent vacancy rate among RNs – down from 13 percent a year ago.

 

Having such a low vacancy rate is as much a result of retention efforts as it is recruiting. St. Vincent recently raised nursing salaries and, according to Chief People Officer Darrick Paul, has built morale by creating a shared nursing model allowing nurses to make policy recommendations that come to the executive team for approval.

 

Those kinds of efforts are important at a time when everyone is competing for nurses. While the nation's shaky economy is inspiring all kinds of employees to stay put rather than look for greener pastures, nurses can always find work elsewhere. According to Paul, "I think for the RNs, it's still a buyer's market per se."

 

The same could be said for physicians, particularly those practicing in-demand specialties. In Fort Smith, the city's two hospital systems, Sparks Health System and St Edward Mercy Medical Center, both have to stay on their toes to meet the community's and their own needs. Not long ago, for example, the city had eight full-time urologists, but after several retired, one moved to Oklahoma, and two moved to northwest Arkansas, only two were left servicing an area of about 400,000 people – far below the recommended ratio of one urologist per 35,000 residents.

 

According to Matt Keep, chief operating officer at St. Edward, the exodus was an impetus to create Mercy Medical Clinic, an entity managed by a physician with a board composed of eight doctors and two administrative personnel. The clinic, which began operating in 2008, gives doctors control over administrative decisions while also providing them a stable paycheck. "It's much more common for (doctors) coming out of residency now to just look to be employed than it was 25 years ago, when they would look to join a specialty group or an independent physician group," Keep said.

 

St. Edward's hometown competitor, Sparks Health System, addresses the problem with its own employed physician practice. Purchased in 1999, Sparks Clinic employs more than 100 providers covering 23 specialties.

 

Clinic Vice President Staci Carroll said Fort Smith's main competitor for physician talent isn't northwest Arkansas or even Little Rock, but larger metropolitan communities such as Dallas. According to Carroll, physicians become accustomed to urban amenities during their residencies, which they often complete in larger cities, and so they don't even give Arkansas, much less Fort Smith, a second look. "Physicians who come here, if you can get them to come, they'll often really fall in love with the community and feel like it's a wonderful place to practice medicine and to raise a family and to live in a community," she said. "It's getting them attracted to come to Arkansas in the first place."

 

According to Carroll, a key to recruiting is being aware of a sea change in physician expectations. Many no longer graduate medical school expecting to be on call nights, weekends and holidays after working all day during the week, an attitude that gave rise to the hospitalist movement. "Hospitals that represent that change in the physician practice pattern and the preferred lifestyle are those that are having success in retaining physicians," she said.

 

St. Edward's Keep said that physician recruiters' best salesmen are the city's current physicians, who tout the city and its opportunities to interested visiting doctors. "You can kind of take something that some people see as a negative and turn it into a positive," he said. "There's not as much competition here, obviously. They can build a practice much quicker. They want to have access to participate in different committees on the medical staffs here at Fort Smith, at St. Edward's or at Sparks. That's an opportunity as well that they might not have in a larger city where the medical community has a higher critical mass."

 

Meanwhile at Baptist, Jennifer Hickey is one of many students preparing for a nursing career. According to Judy Pile, assistant vice president for education at Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock, the system hires about 50 percent of its graduates and doesn't try to hide the fact that part of the school's purpose is to fill its own ranks – in Little Rock and in Baptist providers in other parts of the state.