Evaluating rural healthcare workforce programs: Applying modified whole-of-person retention improvement framework in...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Rural Health
• Workforce Development

Background:

• Significant healthcare workforce shortages are prevalent in rural areas.
• Effective recruitment and retention strategies are crucial for rural healthcare.
• The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) serves as a case study for examining these strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine evidence and identify gaps in VHA recruitment and retention programs for the rural healthcare workforce.
• To utilize a holistic workforce retention framework to analyze existing initiatives.

Main Methods:

• Identified VHA rural workforce initiatives using the 2023 Rural Recruitment and Hiring plan.
• Classified initiatives by rural focus, recruitment/retention focus, and evidence strength.
• Mapped initiatives to a modified whole-of-person retention improvement framework (WoP-RIF) assessing four domains.

Main Results:

• Of 31 VHA initiatives, only 19% exclusively targeted the rural workforce.
• A majority (48%) addressed both recruitment and retention, but 71% lacked sufficient evidence of effectiveness.
• Initiatives predominantly focused on financial (52%) and workplace/organizational (42%) domains, with limited attention to community/place (10%).

Conclusions:

• VHA initiatives for rural workforce shortages are more recruitment-focused than retention-focused.
• Key retention domains, particularly community/place, are underaddressed.
• More rigorous evaluations using a holistic framework are needed to improve rural workforce development.