When WVU Medicine started handing aspiring nurses up to $25,000 in cash, the bet was that money for life’s expenses, not just tuition, would keep them in school. Early returns suggest it is.
As of late July, the Morgantown, W.Va.-based system had signed 985 students to its Aspiring Nurse Program and expected to cross 1,000 within a month, said Jessica Huffman, DNP, RN, assistant vice president of system nursing services.
The program, which launched in August 2023 at two sites before expanding systemwide, gives students their stipends upfront to cover living costs — a flat tire, a utility bill, groceries — in exchange for a three-year commitment to work as a full-time direct care registered nurse at the 25-hospital system. The premise, drawn from student surveys, was that money is what pushes West Virginia nurses out of school before they finish, not a lack of aptitude.
The clearest test of the wager is no longer retention in school but whether those nurses show up and stay. To date, 338 program participants have graduated and are working in WVU Medicine buildings, Dr. Huffman said, with retention holding at 90% or higher.
Dr. Huffman attributes the retention results to a smoother start. Because participants train on the system’s equipment, chart in its electronic health record and meet their nurse leaders while still in school. “Day one is not so scary,” she said. “They feel like they’re already part of our team.”
The return the system can and cannot measure
WVU Medicine has been deliberate about proving the math.
As a nonprofit, “everything that we do, we’re trying to invest back in our communities,” Dr. Huffman said, and leaders scrutinized whether they were paying for students they would have recruited anyway.
One data point suggests they are not. At the system’s academic medical center — its largest hospital and the one with the most Aspiring Nurse Program students — WVU Medicine had two longtime academic partners and two it had not worked closely with. Over the past year, one partner doubled the number of new graduate nurses the system hired from it, and half of those hires were program participants, Dr. Huffman said.
That tracks with a puzzle WVU Medicine set out to solve: state data showed nursing schools had added seats without increasing enrollment. The program, leaders hypothesized, would deepen academic partnerships and fill those seats — and, at the pilot site, enrollment rose.
Harder to quantify is what Melanie Heuston, DNP, RN, the system’s chief nursing executive, calls “economic development.” In surveys, 80% of students said they would not have applied to a baccalaureate program without the support, she said — a figure the system reads as evidence the participants are net new to nursing, not diverted from other programs. Many are current employees moving into nursing from roles such as electroencephalogram technician or nursing assistant.
“These are not people that would have gone to school, and it doesn’t make them less qualified,” Dr. Heuston said. “That’s really an important distinction.”
The bigger, riskier bet comes due next spring
The Aspiring Nurse Program funds students at existing schools. The system’s second wager — a hospital-based nursing diploma program it stood up from scratch — faces a test in less than a year.
The first cohort of 24 students at the WVU Medicine Center for Nursing Education has a 100% retention rate and is outperforming the national average on Assessment Technologies Institute’s National Council Licensure Examination test preparation suite, the readiness assessment most U.S. nursing programs use to gauge whether students are ready to sit for the NCLEX, Dr. Heuston said.
The cohort graduates in May 2027, and its NCLEX pass rate will be the number outsiders judge the experiment by.
Dr. Heuston said the metric is not yet in hand.
“The proof’s in the pudding,” she said. “We’re hoping the first time out, we have a great pass rate, but if we don’t… we know what we’ll have to work on.”
Accreditors, including the state board of nursing and the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, have told the system the program — built with student success coordinators and remediation woven into the curriculum — “should be a model” for others across the U.S.
The program has since achieved full ACEN accreditation, “with exceptional remarks,” Dr. Heuston said, clearing it of provisional status and letting it apply for financial aid to sustain operations.
WVU Medicine has approval to double its Morgantown cohorts to 48 students twice a year and is opening two additional instructional sites: one at Berkeley Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., and another in Wheeling (W.Va.) Hospital for 24 students a year.
On cost, the diploma program’s capital came in under the $14 million estimate, Dr. Heuston said, and graduate medical education reimbursement and grant funding offset its startup and operating costs — leaving what she called “a pretty strong return.” The system is pursuing more grant money to fund the expansion, which she said has drawn interest tied to workforce development.
Expansion required answering concerns from the schools, as some felt threatened by the system’s new programs.
Some local nursing programs feared WVU Medicine would siphon their students, so Tanya Rogers, EdD, MSN, the assistant vice president of nursing education who leads the school, met with them in person to make the case that the state’s shortage is big enough for everyone.
“As the tide rises, all boats rise,” Dr. Heuston said. The system also signed articulation agreements so diploma graduates can matriculate into their education partners’ bachelor’s programs.
A model built for Appalachia — and, its leaders argue, beyond it
These two programs are tuned to the only state that is 100% Appalachian, said Dr. Huffman, who argues the approach can be replicated nationwide.
“Both of these things that we’re doing can be tailored to other communities,” she said, urging peers to “stay curious, understand the barriers in their community and try to fill those gaps.”
Neither program began with the answer, Dr. Heuston noted — they began with an assessment of need.
“When people said we need more nurses, this wasn’t our first answer,” she said. “It wasn’t until we talked to schools and talked to the communities that these ideas came up.”
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