Recruiting and Retaining Professionals
- Many VA medical facilities face challenges recruiting and retaining health care professionals, such as certified registered nurse anesthetists and registered nurses.
- Maintaining its health care workforce is critical to VA in order to provide quality care to its veteran population.
- Some VA medical facilities are not fully following VA’s policy that allows them to adjust salary levels in order to be competitive in their local market areas when hiring and retaining health care professionals.
- VA does not have a nurse staffing system that accurately reflects patient needs and RN workload requirements. Without an accurate nurse staffing system, nursing officials often must use supplemental RN staffing strategies to match RN staffing levels with patient care needs. Excessive use of supplemental RN staffing strategies can in turn adversely impact RN morale and job satisfaction and may lead to RN retention problems.
- VA's efforts to attract and retain nursing staff, which is critical to VA in order to provide quality care to its veteran population, are impeded by a lengthy hiring process--often 9 to 16 weeks to fill a vacant registered nurse position--the lack of flexible work schedules to attract and retain nurses, and a lack of experienced human resources staff to contribute to the recruitment and retention challenges faced by VA.
^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done
In order to improve recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals in VA medical facilities, VA needs to
- expedite development and implementation of the training course on VA's locality pay system policy for VA medical facility officials responsible for compliance with the policy,
Highlights of GAO-08-56 (PDF)
- develop a detailed action plan for developing and implementing a new nurse staffing system at VA medical facilities, and
Highlights of GAO-09-17 (PDF)
- assess barriers to wider availability of alternate and flexible work schedules for registered nurses.
Highlights of GAO-09-17 (PDF)
^ Back to topKey Reports
- VA Health Care: Improved Staffing Methods and Greater Availability of Alternate and Flexible Work Schedules Could Enhance the Recruitment and Retention of Inpatient Nurses
- GAO-09-17, October 24, 2008
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 54 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- VA Health Care: Recruitment and Retention Challenges and Efforts to Make Salaries Competitive for Nurse Anesthetists
- GAO-08-647T, April 9, 2008
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 16 pages) Accessible Text
- VA Health Care: Many Medical Facilities Have Challenges in Recruiting and Retaining Nurse Anesthetists
- GAO-08-56, December 13, 2007
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 64 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
