Merit Health Pathways Benefits Help Employees Pay Down Student Loans
10/27/2022
Employees of Merit Health hospitals are eligible for enhanced benefits designed as pathways to help them eliminate existing student debt faster, pursue additional professional education, and advance their careers. The goal in offering Merit Health Pathways benefits is to support and retain employees and attract a strong workforce, especially frontline nurses, technicians, therapists and other clinicians and caregivers, along with support personnel.
Benefits include a student loan repayment program that enables employees with outstanding student debt to consolidate their loans, reduce interest rates, and benefit from employer sponsored payments. For most clinical employees, Merit Health will directly pay a portion of loan premiums as long as the employee remains current with payments, offsetting student loan balances up to $20,000 per employee.
An employee reimbursement program was established for licensure or certification renewals required for all job classifications and can be used for any license or certification testing or renewal not already offered for free by the hospital.
In addition, a long-standing tuition reimbursement program that provides employees up to $5,000 in tax-free reimbursement annually has been expanded and can be used for continuing education related to any role within the hospital. Previously, employees could only use the tuition reimbursement program toward studies in their current field of work.
“We appreciate our employees in all they do and want to support them,” says Mandy Dean Blackwell, a human resources executive for Merit Health. “Through these benefits, we hope Merit Health Pathways will ease the burden of student debt and allow employees to focus on achieving their goals and career success. These benefits also appeal to new healthcare talent.”
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