Midland Memorial Hospital launches Specialty Area Pay Program

Midland Memorial Hospital (MMH) announced a new Specialty Area Pay Program to enhance compensation for nurses in the Orthopedics, Surgical, Medical, and Oncology units. The program is designed to recognize the expertise and dedication of Med-Surg nurses by offering a premium on their base pay. The premium on Midland Memorial Hospital nurses' base pay accounts for $3/hour for Registered Nurses (RN) and $1.5/hour for Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVN).

Through the program, MMH also aims to attract new talent to these units and retain the nurses contributing to patient care.

"Midland Memorial has long understood the importance of our Medical-Surgical units, but they are often overlooked when it comes to the areas people think of as specialties,” Midland Memorial Hospital's Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Nursing Kit Bredimus told Midland Times. “We at MMH recognized the need to encourage more nurses to consider Med-Surg as a specialty area."

According to Bredimus, Med-Surg is the largest nursing specialty across the globe, in which Med-surg nurses provide care to adults with a variety of medical conditions and can sub-specialize in areas like neurology, orthopedics, surgery, oncology, and more.

"For MMH, we looked at our core service lines in the Med-Surg areas along with staffing trends, patient volumes, contract labor use, and nursing tenure to determine our key target areas,” said Bredimus. “These units make up the vast majority of our Med-Surg areas and the ability of our staff to float between Med-Surg sub-specialties makes it even more important to implement the program in these areas."

Bredimus also discussed the anticipated impact on nurse retention and recruitment. "Our goal for this program is to recognize our current and future Med-Surg nurses for the important role they play,” he said. “Nationally, we have seen declines in the number of Med-Surg nursing specialists. With increased pathways for new graduate nurses to enter directly into other specializations, like Emergency and NICU, we wanted Med-Surg to be considered for a career path as well, rather than the traditional mindset of a required stop before moving into another specialty. Our hope is to set the standard for Med-Surg specialization and to pay our Med-Surg nurses beyond the top of the market to retain our clinical experts and recruit the next generation."

For more information on Midland Memorial Hospital careers, visit their website.