RD300 - Effectiveness of Virginia's Nursing Incentive Programs - August 15, 2014


Executive Summary:
At the direction of Item 283E of the 2014 Appropriation Act of the General Assembly Special Session 2014, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in collaboration with the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Resources was tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of existing incentive programs designed to attract nurses to underserved areas, to specifically include the Nursing Scholarship and Loan Repayment Program.

To perform the requested evaluation, VDH created and conducted a survey study of current and former incentive program participants, as well as nursing school staff and health care providers. Additional objective data was collected from VDH records including: total number of active participants, number of applicants per year, number of recipients turning down the scholarships and number of participants in default of the contract terms. These data were evaluated by VDH staff and pooled to collectively evaluate the efficacy of the current nursing incentive programs with regard to their stated purpose of attracting and retaining qualified nursing professionals to underserved areas within the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The following conclusions and recommendations are made:

1. Virginia’s nursing incentive programs are beneficial in recruitment and retention of nursing professionals; however, contract stipulations and requirements may need reevaluation to increase participation in programs and reduce number of participants in default status.

2. Awareness of Virginia’s nursing incentive programs is limited; the programs would benefit from an increase in marketing efforts and targeted marketing strategies to potential participants.

3. While some nursing incentive programs require participants to be employed in designated underserved areas of Virginia, others require only that a participant work in Virginia; increased efforts and/or contract requirements focused on recruiting and retaining nursing professionals in Virginia’s underserved areas would assist in reducing state health workforce shortages.