The city of Valdez has agreed to pay a new doctor upwards of $300,000 in bonuses over five years if she stays practicing medicine in town, as part of an incentive program aimed at retaining local physicians. She’s only the third full-time medical doctor currently in Valdez.
The Valdez City Council approved the $300,000 contract with Megan Rayman, a family medicine doctor at Providence Valdez Medical Center, at its Oct. 15 regular meeting. The agreement is part of the municipality’s Physician Recruitment and Retention Program, which was born in 2018 in a collaborative effort between the city and local Providence branch.
“This initiative addresses the importance of maintaining consistent health care services in Valdez, given the nationwide shortages of physicians, particularly in rural areas,” said Valdez Communications Director Ana Stroup.
The city has agreed to pay Rayman $60,000 off the bat to stay on with Providence Valdez for a year. For up to four years on top of that, the city will pay Rayman quarterly payments of $15,000 to keep her on Providence’s staff. Should she decide to leave either within the first year or subsequent quarters, Rayman will have to pay back the retention bonuses on a prorated basis. After the contract has expired, it stipulates that Rayman and the city and Providence have the option to extend for another five-year term.
The incentive bonus money comes from an annual surplus in Providence’s revenue reserve fund, and is transferred to the city by way of a previously established operational agreement, according to Valdez City Clerk Sheri Pierce. Basically, in 2018 the city (which owns Providence Valdez) and the hospital devised the Physician Recruitment and Retention incentive program with the understanding that Providence would provide funding and the city would serve as the primary program operators.
Rayman is the sixth doctor signed to the program since its inception. The city and Providence signed their first physician to the program in July 2018, and haven’t signed a new one since December 2021. However, a doctor who signed originally in January 2019 — Angela Alfaro — did re-sign her agreement earlier this year before taking a hospital administration job in Florida.
Pierce told The Cordova Times the town’s only two doctors have been practicing in Valdez for upwards of 20 years, but are getting near retirement age. She said the shortage can put Providence in a pinch — especially the emergency room — if either doctor is sick, out of town, or otherwise unavailable.
“When we do not have a sufficient number of doctors… our emergency room coverage becomes very, very hard,” she said. “With two doctors we can’t effectively cover our emergency room.”
There also aren’t a ton of small-town career doctors anymore, Pierce said, which makes recruitment and retention programs like these a lifeline for rural communities. She noted that the other physicians signed through the program, with the exception of Alfaro, haven’t re-signed for another term.
“New doctors, a lot of the times they don’t stay 20 years in a community anymore,” she said. “If we can keep them for five years, we’re so happy about that.”
Health professional recruitment and retention is a nationwide issue, but it’s exacerbated in Alaska — especially in rural Alaska.
Healthcare is the most important economic sector statewide in terms of employment and wages, according to a 2023 analysis by the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association — but almost 8,000 new healthcare workers must be hired in the state each year to keep up with staffing needs.
The state has made moves to address the issue — including implementing apprenticeships for healthcare occupations and loan repayment programs, as well as forging partnerships with out-of-state institutions to provide education and training. One of the most prominent is the cooperative program between Alaska and other western states with the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle — which gives some preference to Alaska students seeking to study medicine there, since Alaska doesn’t have its own medical school.
The contract between Rayman and the city of Valdez notes that reliable high-quality medical services are crucial to the town’s overall health.
“The city has determined that an insufficient number of physicians presently serve the community, and the high turnover rate of physicians practicing within the city is detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the city’s citizens,” the contract states.
Rayman had previously practiced at a medical clinic in Valdez — which has since been absorbed by Providence — before the incentive program was established, but then relatively quickly moved out of town. She came back to practice medicine in Valdez earlier this spring, according to Pierce.
