Remote Kansas hospital gives employees time off for mission work to attract, keep medical staff

Ashland Health Center in a remote area of southwestern Kansas is taking an "unorthodox approach" to getting and keeping doctors, Roxana Hegeman of The Associated Press reports. The center now gives all employees eight paid weeks off annually to do missionary work in other countries. The hope is that people willing to care for others in developing nations will be "content" in a town of 855 people. (Google map)

The approach seems to be working. The hospital staff now includes a chief medical officer, a medical technologist, a nursing director, a nurse practitioner and other staff, Hegeman reports. There is still a need for nurses, a dentist and a physical therapist.

The hospital promoted its new benefit in Christian publications and at Catholic-run medical schools, but employees can use the eight weeks for any volunteer work, not just mission work, Hegeman reports. Faculty at the private Via Christi medical residency program in Wichita, part of the nonprofit Catholic health care system, helped develop the hospital's recruitment model. (AP photo by Orlin Wagner)

"Everywhere in the country we have problems with health care," Dan Shuman, left, a 43-year old family physician that moved his family from Georgetown, Tex., to Ashland for the mission opportunity, told Hegeman. "But this was a place that was really seeking to make a difference." And the program has, according to Clark County Deputy Sheriff Robert Canton, who was treated for heart problems at the emergency room. Canton used to tell friends not to send him to the local hospital but now he tells his fellow deputies, "take me there." (Read more)