Ballad CEO Alan Levine
Ballad Health announced plans on Monday to invest $10 million annually to increase the wages of nurses employed by the healthcare provider.
The pay increase for existing employees will take effect on June 23, and higher starting rates for new hires will also begin on that date. Ballad CEO Alan Levine announced the move in an internal email on Monday morning, which coincided with the start of National Nurses Week.
In his message, Levine praised the hard work being done by nurses and recognized the need to address a national shortage of healthcare providers.
“Our amazing nurses would be the first to say they could not do their work without all the people who make a hospital or health care facility operate,” Levine wrote. “And that is part of the humility that makes them great servants. However, it is also true that in an environment where we face a significant national shortage of these critical health care providers, a shortage so significant that the productivity of our nurses and direct bedside caregivers is as high as it has ever been, it is important we appropriately recognize the sacrifice that is being made.”
The pay increases will go to acute care RNs, LPNs and nursing assistants in select roles that involve providing direct patient care. Scrub techs, long-term care LPNs and CNAs, clinical LPNs and certified medical assistants and behavioral health techs are also in line for a raise.
Levine cited increased efficiency generated by the merger that created Ballad Health as one source of revenue that made the pay increase possible. He also identified a rule change at the federal level that has improved reimbursement to rural hospitals by Medicare and Medicaid as another major factor that facilitated the increased investment in Ballad’s nursing program.
