The Challenge of Employee Retention in Medical Practices across the United States: An Exploratory Investigation Into the Relationship between Operational Succession Planning and Employee Turnover

Employee turnover is a growing challenge for health-care providers delivering patient care today. US population demographics are shifting as the population ages, which leaves the field of health care poised to lose key leaders and employees to retirement at a time when patient care has grown more complex. This means health care will lose its core of key employees at a time when skilled leadership and specialized knowledge is most needed and directly impacts health care's ability to deliver quality care. Operational succession planning (OSP) may be one solution to manage this looming challenge in health care, as the process identifies and develops the next generation of leadership. Thus, this exploratory national study used a quantitative and cross-sectional design to examine the relationship between OSP and employee turnover. Demographic and 10-point Likert scale data were collected from n = 66 medical practices, using an online survey instrument. Data were analyzed using various descriptive and inferential statistical methods. Distribution (frequency and chi-square) analyses of the study sample, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression analyses were performed across seven demographic characteristics of the medical practices: Specialty, Ownership Structure, Number of full-time equivalent (FTE) Physicians, Number of FTE Clinical Employees, Number of FTE Nonclinical Employees, Number of FTE Employees Left Position, and Region. Study results provided statistically significant evidence to support the relationship between OSP and employee turnover, highlighting that OSP was associated with lower employee turnover. The finding suggests that OSP can serve as an effective mechanism for increasing employee retention.