Employees value health and retirement benefits most

Practice Management. By Julie A. Jacob, AMNews staff. May 27, 2002.

What benefits do physicians need to offer their employees in order to be competitive in the health care job market?

That's a question physicians will likely be asking more often. Although the job market is soft now, there are signs that the economy is on its way to recovery. That means that soon employers will once again be scrambling to hire, a situation that will only be made worse in the coming years as waves of baby boomers retire.

The competition for skilled employees will be especially acute in health care, where job demand is projected to increase over the next 10 years for nurses, medical assistants and medical records technicians, according to U.S. Labor Dept. statistics.

That means medical groups and physicians in solo practices, like all other employers, have to offer not only competitive salaries, but the benefits that employees value. In fact, 77% of workers say that job benefits are a "very important" consideration when they are deciding whether to accept a new job, according to the 2001 Employee Benefit Research Institute/?Matthew Greenwald & Associates Value of Benefits Survey.

And by far the benefit that employees value the most is health insurance. Sixty percent of employees rank health insurance as their most important job benefit, according to the EBRI survey, while 23% say retirement savings plans are the most important. Only a small percentage list traditional pension plans, retiree health insurance, long-term-care insurance and life insurance as the crucial benefit. [...]