How can employers attract the best and brightest people and then keep them? The challenge is bigger for some industries than others.
Take, for example, the chronic doctor shortage in Canada’s rural communities. According to Dr. Brian Goldman of CBC Radio’s “White Coat, Black Art,” in 2011, one in three Canadians lived in rural areas, yet only one in 10 family physicians practised there.
Recruiting and retaining doctors in rural communities is possible, as it is in any industry. You just have to define who you’re looking for and offer total compensation packages to fit their needs.
Ashland Health Center – Ashland, Kansas
This rural town of 850 people struggled for nearly 20 years to attract administrators and healthcare professionals to the 24-bed critical care facility and medical clinic. By early 2009, the hospital had been without a doctor for eight months and an administrator for six months. For more than two years, much of Ashland’s healthcare fell to a single physician assistant.
Benjamin Anderson left a lucrative job as a physician recruiter in Dallas to become CEO at Ashland Health Center (AHC) in January 2009. The hospital board’s chair told Anderson he’d be dealing with an older building, limited finances, and a staff plagued by high turnover, low morale and vacant critical positions. Anderson believed making a difference was more rewarding than the paycheque. He took the position.
His first priority was to recruit a physician—preferably more than one. After considerable research, Anderson developed a plan: every year, he’d give his doctors eight weeks of paid time off to do international mission work. He was appealing to healthcare professionals who felt, as he did, that their job was about more than just money. Within six months he had two impressive candidates, including Dr. Dan Shuman, whose considerable experience includes four years as a military physician in Iraq.
“Serving in challenging conditions abroad teaches me creativity in problem solving since there’s not always another test, modern imaging or a specialist to help me diagnose and treat a patient,” Shuman explains. “Bringing back that creativity in problem solving and improved diagnostic skills helps me serve my patients in Ashland with greater quality and efficiency.”
Anderson agrees, noting that AHC is regaining the community trust lost due to high turnover and instability. Anderson credits service improvements—serving 30% more patients in a single year—to the compassionate, competent care of mission-focused professionals.
Anderson’s unique benefits offering has been extended to all AHC employees, allowing them between four and eight weeks to use at their discretion. Taking the time off isn’t just allowed—it’s encouraged.
“In the last three years, our employees have participated in three mission trips to Zimbabwe,” says Anderson. “Their lives were changed by this experience…their eyes were opened to the needs of these same types of people suffering in their very own community. It has changed the way they work and live in their own community.”
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