Redesign of Nurse Compensation Program

March 4, 2022

TO:All Faculty, Staff and Students

FROM:Dr. Alan Jones, Associate Vice Chancellor for Clinical Affairs

SUBJECT: Redesign of Nurse Compensation Program

Health systems around the country, including UMMC, are facing significant challenges in recruitment and retention of registered nurses, which has resulted in higher levels of nursing turnover and vacancies. We engaged Sullivan Cotter, a national firm, to help our teams review and redesign the RN compensation program to best meet our recruitment, engagement and retention needs. An additional focus included redesigning the RN base pay structure and premium pay structure based on the analysis and comparison to national benchmarks. We are excited about this project moving forward along with the other elements of the Workforce Compensation Plan announced last November.

We have now received and approved the recommendations of the study’s findings. Our human resources and nursing teams have started the intricate process of evaluating each person impacted. Because the recommended compensation adjustments are linked to specific, individualized details, the implementation will take time. The changes will be implemented over four phases with the first phase focused on inpatient nurses effective in May 2022 with the remaining phases being implemented over about a year. Please know this is an institutional priority and every effort is being made to complete all necessary steps as promptly as possible. This is an important and worthwhile investment in our nursing workforce.

The changes to UMMC’s RN pay structure, compensation and premium incentives include:

• Simplify the nursing base pay methodology with a goal of improved clarity
• Adjust nursing base pay to achieve external market median compensation benchmarks
• Increase new graduate nurse base pay to achieve market competitive compensation
• Establish specific compensation incentives for nursing preceptors
• Develop a weekender program with specific compensation incentives
• Develop a tiered PRN incentive program
• Standardize and increase on-call rates
• Develop a pull-outside home unit incentive program

Additional information about the action steps and timeline of these changes will be shared as soon as they are available.

Thank you.