Hospitals are increasingly tied to nurses, report numerous vacancies, the heavy use of expensive travel nurses, and difficulties in accepting new nurses.
36 percent of hospital executives expect more than 25 vacancies this year, compared with 17 percent in 2020, while 21 percent expect more than 50 vacancies and 11 percent expect more than 100 vacancies, according to a survey of more than 50 vacancies Avant Healthcare Professionals.
The nurse recruiting company gathered responses to its annual survey of more than 100 hospital CEOs, senior nurses and human resource managers in January and February.
Compared to the data the company had collected over the previous two years, respondents indicated that their organizations expect higher volumes of openings from nurses.
70% of respondents said they had lost between 5% and 30% of their employees as a direct result of COVID-19.
New graduates and in-house recruitment are the main strategies these organizations will use to fill these vacancies, although far fewer respondents said they were focusing on this second option in 2021 than last year (45% versus 70%).
Notably, 28% and 37% of respondents said they will try to improve salary packages and offer sign-up bonuses to fill vacancies in the coming year. These proportions generally corresponded to the previous years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping these new employees up to date was also more of a challenge.
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Seven out of ten respondents said the pandemic had affected their ability to hire new employees, while 63% said it extended the guidance period for new nursing graduates. Others reported that the nurses they hired had less clinical experience or needed to orientate themselves online or speed up the process.
Add to these difficulties the higher payouts executives have offered over the past year. Fifty-eight percent said they would offer their employees an additional COVID-19 hazard payment and 56 percent said they would offer bonuses. Respondents also said they were looking at strategies such as tuition reimbursement and contracts with international nurses to prevent increases in staff costs.
Much of the focus on payment rates, however, has turned the sharp rise in demand for travel nurses That has been reported in the past few months.
More than 90% of executives said they currently employ travel nurses in their organizations. Three fifths of respondents said they hired between five and 20 travel nurses specifically to help with the pandemic, while 11% said they hired more than 20.
To make matters worse, the new group of COVID-19 travel nurses brings in more paychecks than their peers.
Here, a higher proportion of executives reported offering non-COVID-19 specific travel nurses in the $ 65-75 range than for traveling COVID-19 workers (43% versus 23%). Prices within the higher window of $ 100 to $ 150 were offered to traveling COVID-19 nurses much more frequently (38% versus 11%).
The growing demand for travel nurses also affected the current hospital workforce. 80% of the respondents stated that they had lost some of their nurses due to travel assignments for other hospitals.
“The cost of agency work is unattainable and national rates have a greater impact on areas of the country where the cost of living and wage rates differ even more,” said an unnamed primary nursing offer cited in the survey report.
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The Avant report put each of these findings in the light of broader reports from the International Council of Nurses, the National Bureau of Economic Research and others warn of an impending global shortage of nurses.
Several respondents raised concerns about a “big loss” of nurses to other careers in the future due to COVID-19 burnout and other factors. On the other hand, there have recently been reports of a bump in enrollment in nursing school despite – or perhaps because of – the pandemic.
The rising cost of caregivers and other COVID-19-related stressors have created tension between hospitals and care groups in recent weeks.
Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported A lawsuit between hospital operator Steward Health Care and San Diego-based Aya Healthcare. The former related to alleged price cuts and unlawful cancellations of nursing jobs in a lawsuit filed in March, while the latter countered more than $ 40 million allegedly due for unpaid services.
Last weekend there was also a two-day strike by more than 150 nurses at Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe, California. The work demonstration was supported by the California Nurses AssociationThe hospital had high nursing sales last year due to poor working conditions and inadequate remuneration.
