Burnett Medical Center is a 17-bed critical access hospital in northwestern Wisconsin. It has been increasingly more challenging to fill vacancies and to maintain our workforce. The traveling/agency staffing companies have dominated the workforce, creating challenges for staffing and compensation.
Even with these challenges, we have continued to work on staff recruitment and retention. We have offered sign-on bonuses along with retention bonuses. We were able to offer a match with our 401k retirement for all employees. We assessed our wages and were able to offer an increase this fiscal year. We increased our contributions to the health insurance premiums for employee plus one and family plans. We offer COVID pay to our employees who test positive and must miss work.
In addition, we were able to start a CNA Training Program which began in August 2022. With this, we were able to add four new CNAs to our staff in the nursing home. We continue to look for other ways to retain and recruit!