An Indiana hospital is on a mission to attract recently-graduated doctors with ties to the community. The incentive: Financial aid for medical school, according to the Vincennes Sun-Commercial.
The Good Samaritan Foundation, a non-profit that raises money for Good Samaritan Hospital, a 232-bed community healthcare facility in southwestern Indiana and southeastern Illinois, will offer financial aid to medical students who are graduates from Knox County high schools if they work at Good Samaritan for at least four years upon completing their residency.
“It's a give and take. That's the way I like to describe it,” Foundation Director Gary Hackney told the Sun-Commercial. “In signing this contract, they say, 'Yeah, I'll come back home and give you four years of practice.’”
The foundation is still working out details, such as the amount of money allotted for the program, according to Hackney, who said it will depend on the number of applicants. The funding for the scholarships will come from the money the foundation typically donates to the hospital at the end of each year, ordinarily for purposes such as new equipment.
The initiative takes advantage of a loophole in the Stark Law that prohibits hospitals from using their own revenue to provide recruitment incentives; by creating the scholarship through the foundation, Good Samaritan is able to legally operate the initiative.
The initiative comes at a time when community providers, in particular, are facing recruitment challenges amid ongoing nurse and physician shortages. Healthcare leaders can take several recruiting precautions ahead of shortages, FierceHealthcare previously reported. These include planning ahead for anticipated shortages, building a stronger recruitment pipeline, and expanding the chain of command to hire non-physician providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
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