Hospitals and health systems have lost billions over the last two years, leaving more than 33 percent of them with negative margins, according to an April 25 report by the American Hospital Association.
Six findings:
1. Employment is down by 100,000 jobs compared to pre-pandemic levels, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found. But at a time when hospitals are desperately trying to fill positions, labor expenses per patient were 19.1 percent higher in 2021 than in 2019. Labor expenses are more than 50 percent of hospitals’ total expenses, meaning a small increase in labor costs can have a major effect on hospital’s total expenses and operating margins.
2. The report attributed the increase in labor expenses to hospitals’ dependence on contract staff, specifically nurses. In 2019, travel nurses accounted for a median of 4.7 percent of hospitals’ total nurse labor expenses, compared to a median of 38.6 percent in January.
3. Hourly billing rates for contract employees rose 213 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. This created a 62 percent profit margin for staff agencies.
4. Drug expenses soared by 36.9 percent per patient compared to pre-pandemic levels.
5. Medical supply expenses also rose through 2021, by 20.6 percent, compared to pre-pandemic levels. For intensive care units and respiratory care departments — which were most involved in COVID-19 care — medical supply expenses grew 31.5 percent and 22.3 percent, respectively.
6. Economywide, the consumer price index saw major increases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found. Meanwhile, hospital prices rose modestly, by an average of 2.1 percent per year in the last decade, about half the average annual increase in health insurance premiums.
Businesses who suffered from the Great Resignation, in which large numbers of workers voluntarily resigned during the pandemic looking for more fulfilling work or higher wages, are now hoping the “Great Regret” might bring workers back. According to recent surveys, over 70 percent of workers who switched employment during the pandemic found that their new jobs didn’t live up to their expectations, and nearly half wish they had their old job back.
After scores of nurses left hospital positions for travel roles, health system leaders are seeing some nurses return. One physician told us about a favorite nurse on his oncology unit who returned from over a year as a traveler, ready to settle down and be closer to family.
A chief nursing officer relayed that her system was seeing nurses who took agency positions to work toward personal financial goals, like earning a down payment for a house, wanting to come back now that they’ve reached it: “Travel roles are intense, and most nurses can’t do them forever”.
But other nursing leaders caution that they’re preparing for agency nurses to become a permanent fixture in the workforce: “More nurses will see travel as an option for different points in their career, when they have personal flexibility or need the extra money”.
The “Great Regret” might help some hospitals lessen their reliance on agency nursing in the short-term. But building a stable clinical workforce will require addressing underlying structural challenges, through changes in education, rethinking job roles and care models, and finding ways to build individualized job flexibility and customization.
Hospitals’ reliance on travel workers is nothing new. The pandemic intensified it and highlighted the gap between full-time workers’ pay and lucrative temporary contracts.
While the average salary for a travel nurse can vary based on location, regional demand, hospital type and specialty, the compensation for a travel nurse has increased significantly compared to pre-pandemic, Bill Morgan, president of the Orlando, Fla.-based travel nurse staffing firm Jackson Nurse Professionals, toldBecker’s in September.
Meanwhile, hospitals and health systems have offered bonuses, increased wages and made other investments in employee retention for their staff workers. Still, the compensation gap between hospital employed nurses and travel or agency nurses remains stark.
The gap poses the seemingly simple question: Why aren’t hospitals paying full-time staff more instead of paying higher prices for travel workers?
Travel nursing’s start
Taking a look back at the history of why hospitals started using travel nurses in the first place helps answer that question, said Kathy Sanford, DBA, RN, chief nursing officer at Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health.
Dr. Sanford recalls first using local agencies and travel nurses in the 1980s as a cost-effective staffing strategy for periods when the patient census fluctuates, such as during flu epidemics.
“When you have those fluctuations, you need to have a staffing strategy of what you want to do when the census goes up higher than we are staffed for, but it’s only going to last maybe a month, or a little longer,” she told Becker’s. “Because of the fluctuations, our nursing strategy for staffing was to use these non-employed nurses to fill in when there were gaps.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has created a situation where volumes are consistently higher than normal. And while rates for a travel or agency nurse have traditionally been higher than those of a hospital staff nurse, the current demand has pushed travel rates to record highs.
Rising rates
Pittsburgh-based UPMC, for example, paid an estimated $85 an hour for a traveling nurse or a nurse from an agency before the pandemic. The health system is now experiencing rates between $225 and $250 an hour. Such rates have made nurses who may not have considered traveling before take the leap.
“And the nurses are making more, and we don’t fault the nurses for taking advantage of that opportunity. But … now not only are nurses making more, but the agencies have taken the opportunity to triple their profits … and it shouldn’t be permitted during a pandemic, just like we don’t permit building companies to triple the price of lumber after a hurricane. It just shouldn’t be allowed,” said John Galley, chief human resource officer at UPMC.
“Hospitals are all trying to fill the positions that need to be filled to help us get through this crisis with travel nurses, but because there aren’t enough, it becomes a cycle of bidding of who will pay me the most to travel,” Dr. Sanford said. Because of that, many nurses who may have never considered traveling before are now choosing to do so and leaving hospitals in areas of the country with a lower wage index, she said.
Pay for travel nurses has always been higher for the same reasons hospitals pay float pool nurses more, Dr. Sanford explained.
“Nurses are specialists and they work on a particular type of unit, and sometimes one unit’s census will be down and another unit’s census will be up,” she said. Float pool nurses are willing to shift to different units that need help “and it’s not a favorite thing for nurses to do,” Dr. Sanford said. “You have to pay them a little extra to be willing to learn different types of nursing and be willing to float.”
The same line of thinking applies to agency or travel nurses. Travelers don’t have the perks that come with a full-time job, like job security and benefits. That coupled with the burden of travel itself and short-term assignments was the initial justification for why travel nurses had higher rates.
Simply put, hospitals can’t afford to pay full-time staff wages that were meant for temporary assignments.
“The bottom line is it would not be sustainable for hospitals to pay the kind of dollars that they’re paying right now for travel nurses in the long run. Because nurses are our backbone … they’re our heart, but they’re also our backbone. They’re the majority of our staff.” Dr. Sanford said.
Mr. Galley of UPMC echoed that sentiment, noting that salaries and benefits make up about 50 percent of a health system’s entire expenses. “If you were to double a good portion of that — the nursing salaries — you’d completely wipe out any operating margin. Then you wouldn’t be able to invest in anything to keep the hospitals going,” he said.
And healthcare has a lot of costly demands that would go unaddressed if such rates became the expectation for staff nurses.
“There are a lot of needs that healthcare has in technology, and making sure that we have the equipment to take care of patients, and that we can do programs for the poor and vulnerable that we wouldn’t be able to afford if we pay these non-sustainable prices forever,” Dr. Sanford of CommonSpirit said.
The value of in-house agencies
To combat skyrocketing travel nursing costs, some health systems have introduced their own travel agencies, including CommonSpirit and UPMC, where travel nurses work within the system.
Mr. Galley said UPMC started the agency for its 40-hospital system not only to combat the nursing shortage — and attract back nurses the health system has lost to outside travel agencies — but also to address increased rates from outside travel agencies.
Nurses and surgical techs who qualify for UPMC’s in-house agency will earn $85 an hour and $63 an hour, respectively, in addition to a $2,880 stipend at the beginning of each six-week assignment.
Compensation for travel nurses at UPMC is still higher than full-time employees because the job comes with its own set of challenges. While full-time nurses get to know their facilities and have a more regular schedule, travel nurses are constantly on the move.
“They’re going to have assignments for a few weeks at a time at a particular location, then we’re going to pick them up and move them somewhere else, so they’re going to be constantly traveling, living out of a suitcase, and that’s what external travelers do, so we want to be just like the market, create roles like that and pay like that,” Mr. Galley said. “I think our employees understand the difference between that kind of a lifestyle that goes along with the higher salary.”
CommonSpirit’s internal agency plans to start traveling in the early spring and is in the process of hiring a national director for the program. The system’s goal is to have 500 nurses.
Dr. Sanford said the program will be beneficial because it will bring down competition, and people who want to travel can still be employees within the health system.
“It gives nurses who are our employees a choice if they want to be travelers or if they want to do it part time and then come back to a job within one of our hospitals or in one of our clinics. … They won’t lose their benefits, they won’t lose their seniority. They’ll be our employees,” Dr. Sanford said.
Other systems are exploring similar programs, such as Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health, which recently ran a pilot in-house traveler program. The health system has also used outside agencies, which cost about triple compared to pre-pandemic.
“This program was very successful, less expensive than using an external travel agency and worked really well across our large health system that covers multiple states,” said Patricia Mook, MSN, RN, vice president of nursing operations at Atrium Health.
But internal travel programs may not be easy for other health systems to mimic, especially smaller ones. Hospitals have to be of a certain size for an internal travel program to work, meaning an individual hospital wouldn’t be able to have one, Mr. Galley said.
More than that, it’s a complex undertaking, he said.
“It’s not without its challenges,” Mr. Galley said. “I just think it’s something that takes the resources and thought leadership to be able to do. But you’re not going to find independent hospitals being able to mirror this.”
Dr. Sanford also recommends having a few different strategies in place to combat nurse shortages.
“Don’t make it your only strategy because there are so many issues that we could do better with our nursing staff. … You need to be looking at all of the different things that give nurses voice in your organization,” Dr. Sanford said.
UPDATE: April 14, 2022: Nurses will begin striking April 25 if they are unable to reach a deal with the system by then, according to a Wednesday statement from the union. The two sides have met with a federal mediator three times, and the strike would be open-ended.
Dive Brief:
Unionized nurses at Stanford hospitals in California voted in favor of authorizing a strike Thursday, meaning more than 4,500 nurses could walk off the job in a bid for better staffing, wages and mental health measures in new contracts.
Some 93% of nurses represented by the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement voted in favor of the work stoppage, though the union did not set a date, according to a union release. It must give the hospitals 10 days notice before going on strike.
Nurses’ contracts expired March 31 and the union and hospital have engaged in more than 30 bargaining sessions over the past three months, including with a federal mediator, according to the union.
Dive Insight:
As the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened working conditions for nurses, some unions have made negotiating contracts a priority. Better staffing is key, along with higher wages and other benefits to help attract and retain employees amid ongoing shortages.
The California nurses’ demands in new contracts focus heavily on recruitment and retention of nursing staff “amid an industry-wide shortage and nurses being exhausted after working through the pandemic, many in short-staffed units,” the union said in the release.
They’re also asking for improved access to time off and more mental health support.
Nurses say their working conditions are becoming untenable and relying on travel staff and overtime shifts is not sustainable, according to the release.
The hospitals are taking precautionary steps to prepare for a potential strike and will resume negotiations with the union and a federal mediator Tuesday, according to a statement from Stanford.
But according to CRONA, nurses have filed significantly more assignment despite objections documents from 2020 to 2021 — forms that notify hospital supervisors of assignments nurses take despite personal objections around lacking resources, training or staff.
And a survey of CRONA nurses conducted in November 2021 founds that as many as 45% were considering quitting their jobs, according to the union.
That’s in line with other national surveys, including one from staffing firm Incredible Health released in March that found more than a third of nurses said they plan to leave their current jobs by the end of this year.
The CRONA nurses “readiness to strike demonstrates the urgency of the great professional and personal crisis they are facing and the solutions they are demanding from hospital executives,” the union said in the release.
No major strikes among healthcare workers have occurred so far this year, though several happened in 2021 and in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
Judging from our recent conversations with health system executives, we’d guess CEOs across the industry woke up this morning glad to see the first quarter in the rearview mirror.
Almost everyone we’ve spoken to has told us that the past three months have been miserable from an operating margin perspective—skyrocketing labor costs, rising drug and supply prices, and stubbornly long length of stay, particularly among Medicare patients.
In the words of one CFO, “I’ve never seen anything like this. For the first time, we budgeted for a negative margin, and still didn’t hit our target. I’m not sure how long our board will let us stay on this trajectory before things change.”
Yet few of the drivers of poor financial performance appear to be temporary. Perhaps the over-reliance on agency nursing staff will wane as COVID volumes bottom out (for how long remains unknown), but overall labor costs will remain high, there’s no immediate relief for supply chain issues, and COVID-related delays in care have left many patients sicker—and thus in need of more costly care. Plus, the lifeline of federal relief funds is rapidly dwindling, if not already gone.
Expect the next three quarters (and beyond) to bring a greater focus on cost cutting, especially as not-for-profit systems struggle to defend their bond ratings in the face of rising interest rates.
Even as COVID admissions continue to wane, hospitals report that workforce shortages persist. The impact on hospital finances is stark: as shown in the graphic above, there has beenan eight percent increase in clinical labor costs per patient day since the start of the pandemic, amounting to an additional $17M annually for an average 500-bed hospital.
Two of the primary factors driving this increase—higher turnover among clinical staff and a continued reliance on travel nurses—are mutually reinforcing.
Quarterly turnover rates for some nursing positions doubled from Q4 2019 to Q2 2021, as hospitals turned to expensive agency labor to fill resulting vacancies. Spiking demand for travel nurses, still running nearly three times higher than the pre-pandemic baseline, fueled more turnover, as more nurses left for these lucrative roles.
It’s unclear how long increased labor costs will persist.
Some HR tactics, like signing and retention bonuses, are one-time expenditures. But total hospital employment is still down two percent from pre-pandemic levels, pointing to a diminished healthcare labor supply.
Permanent wage increases may end up being unavoidable, especially for lower-wage jobs, where a new compensation baseline for talent is being set by the market, both inside and outside the healthcare industry.
Two nurses and a licensed physical therapist (PT) originally from the Philippines have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against an Ohio staffing firm, claiming its contracts and practices amount to trafficking and fraud, among other allegations.
The lawsuit claims that Cincinnati-based Health Carousel, which recruits and hires healthcare workers primarily from the Philippines to work in the U.S., employs its workers in “essentially indentured servitude.”
“Health Carousel mandates that its workers not leave the company for years unless they pay the company tens of thousands of dollars,” a complaint filed on behalf of Novie Carmen, RN, Kersteen Flores, RN, and licensed PT Jerlin Amistoso states. “And the company follows through on its threats by suing workers who dare to leave anyway.”
Earlier this month, a Bloomberg investigation first shed light on the case and Carmen, the original nurse behind it.
“I was basically trapped,” Carmen told Bloomberg. “Duped.”
According to the Bloomberg report, Carmen borrowed money from her boyfriend to help pay the $20,000 “quitting fee” and break ties with Health Carousel.
Carmen, Flores, and Amistoso now claim in their lawsuit that Health Carousel knows its workers must partake in lengthy orientation sessions and work overtime, but that the company doesn’t count those hours toward their required commitment period. The lawsuit adds that, “to make these workers feel even more vulnerable,” Health Carousel isolates them and prohibits them from discussing their pay and working conditions with others.
According to the complaint, Health Carousel maintains its scheme through defrauding the federal government, which approves its visa petitions without knowing it routinely fails to pay workers the wage it promises, and defrauding the workers themselves — who are unexpectedly subject to harsh employment terms, difficult workplace conditions, long work requirements, and stringent rules.
The complaint adds that Health Carousel continues to profit from its alleged scheme because healthcare facilities at which workers are placed pay the company more than what it pays its workers, and the company recoups even more money from workers who leave before the company determines they have completed their commitment period.
The lawsuit seeks to end what it claims are Health Carousel’s illegal practices and to compensate victims through forced labor claims under federal and state law, claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and Ohio’s Corrupt Practices Act, and claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Ultimately, Carmen, Flores, and Amistoso allege their circumstances aren’t unique. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that at least 20 nurses in Pennsylvania alone, where Carmen was placed at a hospital by Health Carousel in 2018, have paid high financial penalties in recent years, according to the lawsuit.
Of Health Carousel, the Enquirer reported that the staffing firm has made the Deloitte Cincinnati 100 list of the region’s largest privately held companies for the past 5 years. “In the latest ranking, the company dropped from 39 to 45 on the list, reporting a revenue of $288 million in 2020,” the Enquirer wrote. “It hauled in $301 million in 2019.”
Legal counsel for Carmen, Flores, and Amistoso did not immediately provide additional comment on the case.
A spokesperson for Health Carousel, which has denied the allegations against it in court documents, told MedPage Today in an email that, “Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the specifics of ongoing litigation, but we are confident we will be successful in this matter.”
The spokesperson also pointed to a statement posted on the company’s website that includes the following: “For our part, ensuring the health, safety and well-being of every one of our nurses is the core of our business. To imply otherwise, based on activists intent on exploiting and twisting the experiences of a few, is disheartening and damaging. But more than that, it is simply inaccurate and a grave insult to the millions of people worldwide who continue to be victimized by traffickers.”
The company also posted a list of answers to frequently asked questions, one of which includes information on why nurses have to reimburse expenses when they break a contract. To that end, Health Carousel states in part that, “Requiring repayment of invested expenses and other damages if an employee does not fulfill a service obligation is not a ‘quitting fee’ or a penalty. Rather, it is a customary, reasonable and fair practice that many employers use in a range of industries and occupations to recoup investment in tuition reimbursement, relocation expenses, signing bonuses and more.”
Health Carousel added that the expenses it expects healthcare professionals to reimburse should they not complete their contracts “approximates or underestimates” its upfront investment on their behalf. “For example, when healthcare professionals do not complete the commitment period in the contract, the nurse retains his or her permanent resident visa to work in the United States, but Health Carousel suffers a financial loss because it cannot earn back the money it had advanced for their recruitment, credentialing, sponsorship, relocation and resettlement, and employment,” the company stated.
Nurses who worked at hospitals owned or operated by Vancouver, Wash.-based PeaceHealth are accusingthe health system of retaliating against them when they raised concerns about patient and worker safety, NBC News reported Feb. 6.
Nurses spoke to the news division about their experiences, including Marian Weber, a travel nurse who was contracted to work at PeaceHealth Ketchikan (Alaska) Medical Center. She told NBC News that she raised concerns about critically ill COVID-19 patients who were placed in a unit with no central monitoring system and spoke up against the hospital’s suggestion of keeping a nurse in the room for 12 hours.
She said PeaceHealth terminated her contract in August 2021.
Ms. Weber filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after her contract was terminated, and a hearing is scheduled for June 7, according to radio station KRBD. She seeks reimbursement for travel expenses, among other things.
In addition to Ms. Weber, Sarah Collins told NBC News that she lost her staff nursing job at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver after raising safety concerns, specifically regarding staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios.
According to the news division, Ms. Collins was put on a three-month leave in September after giving a local news interview. She told NBC News she was terminated for “operating outside her scope of practice” and “failing to follow policy.” She also has a complaint pending with the National Labor Relations Board.
Separately, NBC News reported, there is an ongoing lawsuit, filed in April 2020, claiming that PeaceHealth Southwest prevented workers from taking required meal and rest breaks allowed under law and that workers were discouraged from reporting missed breaks.
In a statement shared with Becker’s, PeaceHealth declined to comment on personnel issues or pending cases but said it emphasizes ensuring safety of employees and patients.
“We can wholeheartedly reinforce that the voices and opinions of our caregivers matter, and any concern brought forward is thoroughly reviewed,” the statement said. “We have hardwired safety into all our processes, including a longstanding ‘safe to share’ platform that empowers every caregiver — no matter their role — with the ability to confidentially raise opportunities to ensure safer care. This best-practice approach is part of our commitment to continuously improve and vision to ensure 100 percent safe care.”
“PeaceHealth medical centers’ overall quality and safety outcomes have been maintained in spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic, and our approach continues to ensure top-tier care in the communities we serve,” the health system added.
Read the NBC News report here. Read the KRBD report here.
The Great Nursing Resignation, and hospitals’ growing reliance on expensive agency labor (a.k.a. “travelers”) has grabbed headlines, for good reason. But lately we’ve heard a couple of anecdotes from health system leaders about the second-order impacts of the phenomenon that are worth considering as well.
First, as the ranks of agency nurses at hospitals have swelled, full-time employed nurses’ morale has plummeted—tenured nurses are having to orient their new temporary co-workers, then watch them earn up to three times as much money for the same work.
At the same time, willingness to work overtime among employed nurses has dropped. That’s not just because of burnout—it turns out that the nurses who were most likely to take overtime shifts are also more likely to have chosen to leave full-time employment to become travelers, where they are even more richly rewarded for working extra shifts. So, the “productivity” of the remaining corps of staff nurses has dropped, even as caseloads have increased.
One other implication we’ve heard about recently: the economic impact of “observation” cases, where patients are held in a staffed bed but not admitted—already a bad bargain for hospitals—has gotten worse. That’s because the cost of deploying staff to care for those patients has gone up, due to wage inflation and use of travelers. It’s hard to overstate the level of staffing crisis at most hospitals today, and the rapid growth in reliance on temporary staff will have consequences lasting well beyond the current surge.
CMS is preparing to enforce its vaccine mandate for health care workers, but the agency may not have an accurate count of how many remain unvaccinated—and five health systems are pushing back on federal hospital vaccination data, calling it “extremely erroneous,” Cheryl Clark writes for MedPage Today.
Background
The Supreme Court earlier this month ruled that CMS could require most health care workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19—but U.S. officials currently do not know exactly how many workers remain unvaccinated, primarily due to a lack of reliable immunization data.
At the end of December, CDC reported that 77.6% of hospital workers were fully vaccinated. However, that figure was based on data from only about 40% of the nation’s hospitals. Hospitals currently send vaccination data to the agency on a voluntary basis, but beginning May 15, they will be required to send in weekly data, just like nursing homes have been.
According to Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), CDC’s data is likely representative of providers nationwide, as an AAMC survey of 125 academic hospitals found similar results. More than 99% of doctors and close to 90% of nurses were vaccinated, she said, but vaccination rates dropped off to the 30% to 40% range for those in more operational roles, such as transportation and food service workers.
Is federal vaccination data for hospitals inaccurate?
Further adding to the confusion about health care workers’ vaccination rates are potential inaccuracies in a federal database that tracks Covid-19 vaccinations among workers in hospitals across the country. According to five health systems listed as having the highest numbers of unvaccinated workers, the database is “extremely erroneous,” Clark writes.
In the database, Adventist Health Orlando (AHO) is shown to have 18,576 unvaccinated workers, 637 partially vaccinated workers, and 25,253 fully vaccinated workers. However, Jeff Grainger, director of external communications for AdventHealth in Central Florida, said those numbers weren’t possible since the organization “[doesn’t] have 44,000 employees in one hospital.” He added that 96% of AHO’s team members have already complied with CMS’ mandate.
The University of Illinois Hospital (UI) was listed in the database as having 12,049 unvaccinated workers and 272 partially vaccinated workers. Jacqueline Carey, from health system’s public affairs department, disputed these numbers, saying UI had 6,530 workers as of Jan. 19, with 96% of them fully vaccinated. The remainder were either partially vaccinated or had approved exemptions.
The hospital with the third highest number of unvaccinated workers was Mount Sinai Hospital, Clark writes, but Lucia Lee, a hospital spokesperson, said the federal data was inaccurate. According to Lee, Mount Sinai Health System, of which the hospital is a part, has vaccinated 99% of its more than 43,000 employees.
A representative for Ochsner Medical Center, which is listed as having the fourth highest number of unvaccinated workers, also pushed back on the statistics in the database. Currently, 99.57% of Ochsner’s over 34,000 employees are compliant with its Covid-19 policy, with 95% of workers Ochsner Health and Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport fully vaccinated.
Finally, Kena Lewis, a spokesperson for Orlando Regional Medical Center, said that federal data showing the hospital has 44,154 workers is inaccurate. Instead, she said the hospital is one of 10 in the Orlando network, which has 23,709 total employees. Although Lewis did not give the health system’s vaccination rates, she said it “continues to review the guidelines regarding Covid-19 vaccination requirements for health care organizations and will take appropriate steps.”
Although it is not clear why there are discrepancies between the federal data and what these health systems are reporting regarding vaccination rates, there are some potential explanations, Clark writes.
According to Carey, the federal database only includes vaccination information provided by the UI health system and employee health services. This means that vaccinations workers received elsewhere, such as through a personal provider or pharmacy, are not included in the data, and they will show up as being unvaccinated.
Separately, a spokesperson for another of the five organizations told Clark on background that short-term nursing staff contracted through agencies may show up as unvaccinated in the federal database. Although the agencies assure employers the nurses are vaccinated, hospitals do not independently verify this information.
HENRY KOTULA 