Employment retention of health care providers in frontier areas of Alaska.

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this study were to: describe the length of employment of health care providers in rural Alaska; assess whether there are differences in length of employment among community health aides, medical doctors, and nurses; and determine whether provider length of employment is significantly increased following implementation of telemedicine.

STUDY DESIGN

We conducted a prospective cohort study of length of employment among health professionals in rural Alaska, and identified the cohort based on current employment status of community health aides, medical doctors, and nurses.

METHODS

Employment data were collected from four Alaska Native regional health corporations. Kaplan-Meier product-limit survival analysis was used to assess employment length. The Mantel-Haenszel log-rank test was used to test the difference between retention (survival) curves among doctors, nurses, and community health aides for all four regional health corporations combined. Data included provider hire date, termination date, and position title. Fifty seven percent of the data points were right-hand censored.

RESULTS

The community health aides (median (Mdn) = 1186 days) were retained significantly longer than either the doctors (Mdn = 596 days), or the nurses (Mdn = 408 days), who were not significantly different from each other (log-rank chi2 (2, N = 996) = 68.30, p = 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings document that community health aides in the region retain their jobs significantly longer than doctors and nurses. Findings highlight the problem of providing an adequate health work force in rural areas.