Locals being recruited to fill Idaho medical job vacancies

MONTPELIER, Idaho — A rural hospital in southeastern Idaho has cut down on recruiting costs by tapping into the local community to recruit and train medical professionals to fill its job vacancies.

Through the "Grow Our Own" program, Bear Lake Memorial Hospital selects 10 to 15 recruits each year and offers them financial support to go to school and become medical professionals at the hospital in the small town of Montpelier, where fewer than 3,000 residents live, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report.

Hiring in the community has proven cost-effective because the hospital doesn't have to pay hefty recruiting fees to find people outside the region, said Bear Lake Memorial chief Rod Jacobson.

The hospital has spent less than one percent of its $18 million budget on recruiting local employees, who also tend to stay longer than employees hired from outside the region, Jacobson said.

"Typically if we bring somebody out of the area, they have no roots here, and in a couple of years, they're off to bigger and better things," Jacobson told the Idaho State Journal.

The hospital has used the program since the late 1980s to train and hire about 100 medical professionals who now hold jobs such as lab technicians and nursing assistants at Bear Lake Memorial. Some of these employees have also been trained to fill positions in the hospital radiology department, Jacobson said.

Hospital employees recruited through the "Grow Our Own" program include 40-year-old Steve Hill, who has a master's degree in biology used to teach science at Bear Lake High School.

The hospital helped Hill pay for his education at Idaho State University and he joined the Bear Lake Memorial staff in 2004 as an instructor and medical technician.

Hill now works in a hospital laboratory, where he processes blood tests among several other duties, he said.

"Here we have to do a little bit of everything," Hill said.