HCA Healthcare required entry-level nurses in Nevada to complete a residency program as a condition of employment — then stuck them with a loan if they left early. The state just forced the company to pay some of that money back.
Nevada reached an $862,000 settlement with HCA Healthcare over the hospital operator’s use of training repayment agreement provisions, commonly known as TRAP loans, that burdened entry-level nurses with debt tied to their employment, according to a news release from Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office.
HCA generally required entry-level nurses to complete a specialty nursing residency program as a condition of employment. Under the agreement, nurses who left the company before completing a two-year period often had the loan sent to debt collection, or had the remaining balance deducted directly from their final paycheck.
Ford’s office called the debt unlawful, saying it hindered the ability of Nevadans to begin their careers in healthcare. HCA agreed to pay nearly $76,000 in restitution to Nevada nurses who had already made payments on the debt.
Nevada joined California and Colorado, along with the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Biden administration, in a multistate investigation into HCA’s use of the training repayment agreements before reaching the settlement.
HCA Healthcare owns or operates MountainView Hospital, Sunrise Hospital and Southern Hills Hospital in the Las Vegas Valley, among its broader national hospital network.
Under the settlement, HCA is required to notify Nevada nurses eligible for restitution directly, rather than requiring affected nurses to come forward on their own to claim the money owed to them.
$76,000 split among however many nurses actually paid into HCA’s training loan program works out to a modest amount per person. The settlement’s real significance is narrower and more specific: Nevada’s attorney general determined that making new nurses go into debt just to keep the job they were hired for crossed a line state law doesn’t allow.
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