Editor’s note: This commentary is by Kirsten Berggren, a nurse practitioner at the UVM Medical Center.
[I]f you wanted to start a new hospital and have it be the best in the area, what would you do? Would you build the fanciest new building? Have the most modern equipment? The biggest rooms? I tell you what I would do — I would find out how much all the other hospitals and clinics in the area were paying, and pay 10 percent more, across the board, to all staff. That would guarantee the highest quality staff, and from the best staff comes the best care.
Yes, equipment and buildings are nice. Up-to-date diagnostic equipment is essential. But without quality staff, none of those material things matter.
I would build a hospital that felt like home to walk into, because the people working there were happy and liked coming to work every day. I would hire the best nurses away from the competing hospitals, with the most expertise in patient care and day-to-day operations. I would pay the support staff enough that they would stay for an entire career, so each and every person you encountered was experienced, well-trained, and expert in the services they provided. I would pay the doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners enough that there were always enough providers, with no need for anyone to become overextending covering extra patients, so everyone had enough time to do all their paperwork without feeling rushed. So that physicians didn’t have to cut back to part time to keep their workload manageable.
I don’t know why UVM Medical Center hasn’t figured this out. All of the money for new buildings and offices and marketing is great – but without a well-paid staff, the experience is essentially unchanged for the patient. Patients are waiting weeks or months to get in for an appointment, nurses are rushed and stressed, support staff is often new to the job, phone calls aren’t returned promptly because everyone is covering for the unfilled positions in their department.
UVMMC, as the premier academic medical center in the area, needs to have the premier staff, which we can’t get if Porter Medical Center, Northwestern Medical Center, Copley Hospital, Central Vermont Medical Center, Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital and Dartmouth-Hitchcock are all paying higher wages to their nurses, medical assistants, support staff and medical providers. The premier hospital in the area should never have openings that last more than a few weeks. Everyone should want to work there.
As of this writing, UVMMC has 115 open nursing positions. Dartmouth has 34. The other area hospitals have between 20 and 30, except Copley, which has 10. Yes, UVMMC is the largest of these hospitals, and yes, there aren’t enough nurses anywhere. But if UVMMC was the best place to work, there wouldn’t be 115 open positions just in nursing. There are 11 open advanced practice provider positions (nurse practitioners, physician assistants and psychologists), but only four open administrative positions; 27 open positions for clinical specialists, only one open for marketing and communications. Clearly this is a great place to be an administrator or a marketer, but maybe not as great for a career providing direct patient care.
Please, UVM Medical Center, it’s time to start appreciating the people who really matter in a great health care organization. Start paying enough in salary and benefits to keep the quality staff we all deserve. Otherwise the best and brightest will keep doing what they’re doing now, which is finding better places to work.
