Healthcare workforce recruitment and retention challenges are hot topics among hospital and health system leaders seeking successful ways to meet these challenges.
At Brentwood, Tenn.-based Lifepoint Health, Aaron Lewis, executive vice president and CFO, is also putting significant time and resources toward these areas.
"There aren't enough physicians," Mr. Lewis told Becker's during a CFO+Revenue Cycle podcast. "In order for us to execute upon our mission of making communities healthier, we have to continue to recruit and retain providers into our communities."
Mr. Lewis said that, because each healthcare position has different needs, from training to support, Lifepoint Health has built externship programs for people who have not yet joined the healthcare workforce to become familiar with it.
The health system has a fellowship program for more-advanced nurses, but is looking to expand it for first-year nurses to help them grow their careers at Lifepoint Health.
"Some people may want to stay as a nurse, and some people may want to evolve into a nurse manager or a chief nursing officer," he said.
Lifepoint is also focused on appealing to different generations of healthcare workers, with a strong focus on culture.
Mr. Lewis said the system has invested "a lot of dollars, time and energy" in reducing friction for healthcare workers, allowing them to simplify tasks like shift scheduling.
"Different generations of individuals have different career goals and different personal goals," he said. "We've been appropriately forced as an industry into a place that we have to better understand the matching concept, to make sure that nurses and individuals at the bedside are choosing where they want to work, and we have to be a destination that makes it easy and reduces friction. Once they're in that organization and in that local facility, [making sure] that it's a culture that no one wants to leave."
Along with a focus on workforce, Lifepoint continues to heavily invest in partnerships and behavioral health, with the goal of growing and expanding care access in the acute care, behavioral and inpatient rehabilitation spaces.
In 2021, Lifepoint merged with Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare. In 2023, the health system acquired a majority ownership interest in Springstone, a behavioral health network, adding 18 hospitals and 35 outpatient locations to Lifepoint's portfolio.
"It's critically important for us to continue to augment our acute care communities as well as enter new communities, whether that's through partnerships or independent facilities that we're operating," he said. "It is a service line that is critically needed."