An internship program can provide healthcare organizations with a competitive advantage, said Craig Nesta, JD, a practice management consultant and assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, during a session Tuesday at MGMA-ACMPE’s annual conference in San Antonio.
“(An internship program) enhances an organization’s HR strategy,” he said. “It will be a proactive approach to labor market shortages. Given the (predicted) tremendous growth (of the healthcare sector’s labor market), especially for physician practices … we’re really going to need to plan ahead…. It’s very important to have that farm system, if you will, in place.”
How to get an internship started? Nesta suggested:
- get an executive-level champion
- get the word out
- add the program to the organization’s mission and align the program with the goals of the organization
- cultivate relationships with faculty and administrators at colleges and universities
- post internship positions on campuses, on the organization’s website and push out through social media
- attend career fairs
Establishing an internship program is not without its challenges, Nesta warned. Folks in your organization may tell you they would love to have such a program, “but.”
Those “buts” include worries that such a program will cost too much. And there are some costs associated with an internship program, Nesta said. Costs may include setting up a specific internship website; some administrative costs; and salary dollars if the organization opts for paid internships.
If a separate budget isn’t created for an internship program, funds may be found within temporary staff budgets, vacancy rate budgets and recruiting budgets. And while there may be costs to running an internship program, the pay back comes in the form of getting work done – including some special projects that may have been on the back burner – and a reduction in recruiting costs if the organization uses the program as a “farm team.”
“There is an investment and challenges to be overcome, and there is that short term kind of wave they have to get over, but once these folks get on board, once they’re trained, the amount of work that they produce and the amount of value to the organization is (worth) the amount of front work that’s required to get them up to speed,” Nesta said.