Erlanger Health System has seen a significant decrease in nurses calling in sick since increasing pay by around 10% for Erlanger's roughly 1,500 hospital-based registered nurses and more than 300 on-call nurses effective Feb. 5.
Rachel Harris, chief nursing executive, said during an Erlanger Board of Trustees meeting Thursday that the call-in reduction was an unanticipated benefit of the raises, which trustees approved during a January board meeting as part of an effort to help recruit and retain more nurses.
Throughout the pandemic, many hospitals contracted with high-cost travel nurses to mitigate workforce shortages. Erlanger, on the other hand, made the decision to forgo that staffing model and instead offer incentives and overtime pay to current staff and use internal contracts.
Harris said during last month's board meeting that while hospital leaders stand by that strategy, relying on incentives and overtime pay was no longer sustainable, which is why the roughly 10% pay increase was needed.
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At Thursday's meeting, Harris attributed the reduction in call-ins to decreasing the hospital's reliance on contracts that mandated staff work four or five shifts per week and incentives that were hard for nurses to refuse in favor of a permanent pay increase.
