Hospitals' latest perk: Running your errands

Concierge services for doctors, nurses and other staff are seen as a way to boost employee satisfaction and productivity.

By Katherine Vogt, AMNews staff. June 20, 2005.

Beholden to the hectic demands of raising a family and being director of the nephrology fellowship program at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tenn., Julia Lewis, MD, doesn't have much time for life's smaller tasks.

So when Dr. Lewis needed to find a crib for a young houseguest, she took advantage of a relatively new perk for employees at the university's medical center. She used its concierge service -- known as the Vanderbilt Valet -- to make the arrangements for her.

"I'm very busy as a faculty member. When I'm not being a faculty member, I want to be available to my children and my husband for things that are meaningful to us," Dr. Lewis said. "I have a lot more ability to do that when I can rely on the valet service to find people to do things for me."

Vanderbilt is among a growing group of hospitals nationwide that have begun offering concierge services to physicians, nurses and other workers. The services save employees time by taking care of personal chores such as wrapping gifts, dropping off dry cleaning, shopping for groceries or coordinating car repairs. And the hospitals can use the services to recruit and retain employees by touting them as a luxurious perquisite.

Concierge services have been offered in some corporate sectors for more than a decade. Experts say they only recently have begun to catch on in health care as work-force shortages have sharpened competition for staff.

"There's more competition for physicians in America than ever. Doctors are looking to go where the grass is greener, and part of that is asking what are the perks and benefits of working at this hospital," said Kurt Mosley, vice president for business development for The MHA Group, a Dallas-based health care staffing firm.