Ballad Health Investing $10 Million in Nurses’ Raises

Ballad Health, a healthcare system serving parts of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, recently committed $10 million to ensuring their nurses receive well-deserved raises. As the Kingsport Times News reported, this investment will be directly put toward wages for acute care registered nurses, long-term care licensed practicing nurses, and scrub techs, among other roles for direct inpatient care and behavioral health.

Alan Levine, Executive Chairman, President and CEO of Ballad Health, shared this announcement during National Nurses Week in an email to Ballad Health team members, noting that this increase will be helping thousands of employees.

“These areas of focus have been most impacted by the national shortages of health manpower, and have consistently shown the greatest number of vacancies throughout the nation, and certainly our experience is no different here,” Levine stated in his email. “We compete heavily for these professionals and must continue to do so.”

The pay increases will go into effect on June 23 for existing team members. This investment will also affect starting hourly rates for new hires.

“Our nurses and those who work with them in the provision of direct patient care are heroes,” Levine added. “Each of us does important work, and that, no doubt, is an important fact. Our amazing nurses would be the first to say they could not do their work without all the people who make a hospital or health care facility operate. And that is part of the humility that makes them great servants. However, it is also true that in an environment where we face a significant national shortage of these critical health care providers, a shortage so significant that the productivity of our nurses and direct bedside caregivers is as high as it has ever been, it is important we appropriately recognize the sacrifice that is being made.”

For more information about Ballad Health, click here.