Aspen (Colo.) Valley Hospital is located in one of the most scenic communities in the U.S. The critical access hospital serves a unique patient population of active locals and vacationers who need services.
Aspen Valley built a unique and close-knit team with a strong culture and penchant for innovation. It’s beginning to integrate artificial intelligence into workflows and last year went live with the first single-instance Epic EHR for a critical access hospital. But not everything is perfect.
“This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It really is. But there’s also a shadow side, which is, the cost of living is incredible,” said Tom McCauley, chief human resources officer of Aspen Valley Hospital, during an interview with the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “If you are a first, second or third year nurse coming out, it’s difficult. While you have the joys of going outside and hiking, biking, skiing, snowboarding and fishing, it’s just beautiful and amazing. But we have different home budgets here and I need to have a solution that will not only attract the world’s best talent, but also retain them.”
Mr. McCauley spends about 40% of his time working on affordable housing initiatives, collaborating with the local government and other employees to solve challenges around the high cost of living.
“It’s not just affordable housing, but affordable childcare and making sure there’s plenty of options for our young families with kids so mom and dad can go to work and be focused on that while their kids are growing and being nurtured,” he said. “There are constraints that way, that’s the shadow side of where we live. It might not be right along the lines of operating a hospital, but it certainly impacts our employees.”
Aspen Valley dedicates a portion of their budget and leadership’s time to addressing affordability issues in the short term, and plant sees for long term solutions as well.
He’s also focused on improving employee engagement and experience. A few years ago, the hospital conducted an employee wellness survey and received a low grade on employee recognition.
“I didn’t really think about recognition being part of a wellness survey, but it was ridiculously consistent across the board. That helped us change our levers on the fly and pour more effort and energy into recognition and how we recognize our people and make them feel more valuable,” said Mr. McCauley. “Ultimately, I hoped that would impact retention rates. We were successful in doing that.”
They also heard their team desired unique benefits centered around their pets. Many of the hospital’s employees have dogs and need housing allowing pets. They also need help with walking their dogs, pet care and bereavement for pets. Customizing benefits elevated the employee experience and made a big difference in employee satisfaction. Aspen Valley’s attrition rate has dropped for the last four years, and is about five percentage points below the industry average.
Now, the HR team is focused on hiring the right people culturally to fill holes on the team.
“When we attract people, we find a great culture fit,” said Mr. McCauley. “They plug right in. They’re usually an outdoors person, but they also have the altruistic health care DNA that we all know and love. We want them to stay. The investments that we make in them show we want them to stay and grow their career here. The fact that attrition’s been down for four straight years, we’re excited about that.”
Employee engagement scores are also going up while open roles dwindle. They are taking a fresh approach to recruiting and going through a rebrand. He identifies the “right person” for the health system by finding someone who will thrive in their unique environment.
“We’re on a pretty good trend right now. Certainly, whether it’s the industrial headwinds or the headwinds that we have locally new and unique to us, that maybe isn’t somewhere else like our housing or childcare initiatives, there’s certainly enough to keep us busy. But the more that we can make a dent on those things, the better employee experience we are going to have, and the more people will tend to stay for the long term,” he said.
