Health Care Provider Recruitment and Retention in Millard County, Utah

Millard County, Utah with its remote rural location and low population density has experienced recurring problems with recruiting and retaining primary care health care providers. By conducting a series of in-depth interviews with current and past health care providers as well as administrators involved in the recruitment efforts, this research aims to improve the understanding of the root causes of provider recruitment and retention failures in Millard County. Findings of this study will help us design more effective methods of recruiting and retaining health care providers in the county. Lessons learned from Millard County may also provide valuable insights for other rural counties that may be facing similar issues. For this purpose, I plan to conduct a series of approximately twenty semi-structured face-to-face interviews. If in-person can\u27t be arranged, then a written or phone interview format will be employed. The majority of the interviews consist of health care providers who have practiced or are currently practicing in Millard County, Utah. Additional interviews will be conducted with administrative personnel who have been involved in the recruitment or retention of health care providers. This research proposal has been reviewed and approved by the USU Institutional Review Board (IRB Protocol #9699) I have served as a health care professional in Millard County from 1984 to 2017 and worked with the providers and administrators who will make up the pool of potential interviewees. My personal and professional experiences in the field of health care in Millard County will facilitate reaching and conducting interviews with the participants. Collection and analyses of data from these in-depth interviews will shed important lights on the underlying causes contributing to this problem in recruitment and retention of health care providers in Millard County