Category Archives: Nurses Shortage

Lawmakers stress urgency of healthcare worker shortage

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Relations, Medicare Funding, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Education, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Training, Nurse Travelers, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Shortage, Physician, Physician Residents, Physician Shortage, Physician Staffing, Physician Workforce • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/lawmakers-fixes-healthcare-workforce-shortages/642994/

Addressing the education pipeline is one thing that legislators could focus on to improve nurse and physician shortages, medical school and health system leaders said.

As the healthcare industry continues to face pandemic-driven workforce challenges, lawmakers are exploring ways to boost the number of clinicians practicing in the U.S.

“A shortage of healthcare personnel was a problem before the pandemic and now it has gotten worse,” Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., said during a Thursday Senate HELP committee hearing. “Health care jobs have gotten more challenging and, in some cases, more dangerous,” he said.

The country faces a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034, including 48,000 primary care physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Hospitals are currently facing shortages of registered nurses as burnout and other factors drive them to other roles. 

For example, 47-hospital system Ochsner Health in New Orleans has about 1,200 open nursing positions, Chief Academic Officer Leonardo Seoane said at Thursday’s hearing.

The workforce shortaged led Ochsner to close about 100 beds across its system during the past six months, leading to it use already-constrained emergency departments as holding bays for patients, he said.

Like other systems, labor costs have also been a concern due to a continued reliance on temporary staff to fill gaps. Ochsner’s non-agency labor costs grew just under 60% since 2019, while its costs for contract staff grew nearly 900%, he said.

“Our country is perilously short of nurses, and those we do have are often not working in the settings that could provide the most value,” Sarah Szanton, dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing said.

“This was true before the pandemic and has become more acute,” she said.

While many nurses left permanent roles for higher-paying contract positions during the pandemic, others have turned to jobs at outpatient clinics, coinciding with a shift toward non-hospital based care.

Registered nurse employment is nearly 5% above where it was in 2019, with nearly all that growth occurring outside of hospitals, Douglas Staiger, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, found in his research and said at the hearing.

One major concern: Driving current and projected shortages in hospitals that lawmakers can address is the educational pipeline, medical school and health system leaders said.

Educational programs for nurses and physicians face site shortages and educators who are often allured by other higher-paying jobs in the industry.

Nursing educators in Vermont earn about $65,000 a year — about half of what nurses with similar degrees working in hospitals earn, Sanders said during the hearing. He asked members to consider expanding the Nurse Corps and nurse faculty loan repayments, among other programs.

Supporting partnerships between universities and hospitals to create more training opportunities is another way Congress can help, along with addressing high costs of tuition, James Herbert, president of University of New England, said during the hearing.

“Scholarship and loan repayment programs are critical to make healthcare education more accessible for those who would otherwise find it out of reach,” Herbert said.

That includes expanding and improving Medicare-funded physician residencies, he said.

Creating a more diverse workforce that looks more like the population it serves is another important task, and one lawmakers can address by supporting historically black colleges and universities.

Federal funding could help improve classrooms and other infrastructure at HBCUs “that have been egregiously are underfunded for decades,” in addition to expanding Medicare-funded residencies for hospitals that train a large number of graduates for HBCU medical schools, said James Hildreth Sr., president and CEO at Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

The American Hospital Association submitted a statement to the HELP subcommittee and said it also supports increasing the number of residency slots eligible for Medicare funds and rejecting cuts to curb long-term physician shortages.

Other AHA supported policies to address current and long-term workforce shortages include better funding for nursing schools and supporting expedited visas for foreign-trained nurses.

AHA also asked lawmakers to look into travel nurse staffing agencies, reviving requests it made last year alleging that staffing companies engaged in price gouging during the pandemic.

Last year some state lawmakers considered capping the rate hospitals can pay agencies for temporary nursing staff, though none ended up passing legislation to do so.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) workers stage largest-ever strike

Posted on by • Posted in Employee Compensation, Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Labor Organizing, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Labor Strike, Nurse Retention, Nurse Staffing, Nurses Shortage, Nurses Union, Workforce Engagement, Workforce Providers, Workforce Retention, Workforce Strategy • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/d62b14db92fb/the-weekly-gist-february-10-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Monday’s walkout of tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance staff was the largest in the NHS’s 75-year history.

Labor demonstrations have been ongoing across the past few months, as workers demand higher pay and better working conditions amid rampant national inflation and increased workloads.

Specific demands vary by union and nation within the United Kingdom. Welsh nurses called off their strike this week to review a proposal from Wales’ Labour Party-run government, while the Royal College of Nurses, the UK’s largest nursing union, has countered a nominal 5 percent pay increase proposal with demands for a five percent pay raise on top of inflation, which topped 10 percent in Britain in December. 

The Gist: A glance at our neighbors across the pond shows that the US healthcare system is not the only one currently experiencing a labor crisis.

The UK’s nationalized system has also failed to shield its workers from the combined impact of COVID burnout and inflation. But the NHS, as the UK’s largest employer and perennial object of political maneuvering, is more susceptible to organized labor actions. 

In contrast, American healthcare unions, which only covered 17 percent of the country’s nurses in 2021, must negotiate with local employers, whose responses to their demands vary.

While this may enhance the bargaining power of US health system leaders, it also heightens the risk that we will fail to adequately secure our nursing workforce, a key national resource already in short supply, for the longer term. 

Is Magnet status beginning to lose its attraction?

Posted on by • Posted in American Nurses Association, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Magnet Status, Nurse Retention, Nurse Staffing, Nurses, Nurses Shortage, Nurses Union, Strategy • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/8f3f698b8612/the-weekly-gist-january-27-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

As hospitals and health system leaders continue to grapple with persistently high nursing vacancy rates and severe staffing challenges, and face growing pressure to cut costs, we’re beginning to hear serious—if paradoxical—consideration being given to sharpening the axe, with an eye on a long-standing sacred cow: “Magnet” status.

For years, leading systems have invested significant time and resources to earn Magnet status, a designation of nursing quality granted by the American Nursing Association through its American Nurses’ Credentialing Center. Applying for—and then renewing—the designation can cost millions of dollars and involve significant process changes and staff time. In return, participants can market themselves as “Magnet hospitals”, presumably garnering additional patient business and giving them a leg up in recruiting high-quality nurses. At a time of severe nursing shortage, you might expect interest in earning or maintaining Magnet status to be spiking.
 
But that’s not what we’re hearing. “It’s just too expensive,” shared one system CEO recently. “We haven’t really seen it move the needle on volume, and our Magnet-designated facilities are just as stretched as the non-Magnet ones, with equally low morale.” Plus, at a time when the ability to pursue flexible staffing models is at a premium, keeping up with Magnet standards is increasingly handcuffing some hospitals looking to evaluate alternative staffing solutions.

“We can achieve all of the benefits of Magnet without having to jump through their hoops on process and data collection,” a system chief nursing officer told us. “We’re working on our own, internally-branded alternative to Magnet—something our own staff comes up with, rather than something artificially imposed from an outside organization.” 

Ironically, this may be another area—like the battle against contract labor—in which systems now find themselves aligned with nursing unions, which have long opposed the Magnet program as just a marketing gimmick. There’s no question that programs like Magnet have helped increase the visibility of nursing as a driver of quality care. But given the current economic environment, it’ll be interesting to see how much hospitals are willing to continue to invest to maintain the designation.

XBB.1.5 variant becomes dominant COVID strain in US

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Coronavirus XBB.1.5 Subvariant, Hospital Capacity, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infection Rates, Infectious Virus, Nurses Shortage, Vaccination, Vaccine, Vaccine Booster, Vaccine Supply • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/ad2d38fe8ab3/the-weekly-gist-january-6-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Surging from less than 5 percent of cases in the first week of December, XBB.1.5 now makes up over 40 percent of all COVID infections in the US. The new variant appears to demonstrate a high level of immune evasion, and is around 40 percent more contagious than the next most virulent strain, though illnesses caused by XBB.1.5 do not seem to be more severe. Weekly rates for new COVID-related hospital admissions are now higher than at any point since February 2022, despite case counts remaining lower than the peak of the summer wave in July 2022 (although it is likely that the vast majority of cases are now identified through home testing, and not reported, making the data unreliable). 

The Gist: While the new variant seems to be less likely to create a COVID spike of the magnitude we experienced last winter, hospitalizations rising faster than case counts bears watching. That’s especially true given the current staffing situation in most hospitals, which makes each COVID admission and each caregiver call-out for illness a cause for concern. 

Only 15 percent of eligible Americans have received the most recent bivalent booster, leaving the population more vulnerable to this and future variants. Plus, additional funding to support the fight against COVID does not seem to be forthcoming from the new Congress. Beset with surges of COVID, flu, and RSV admissions, hospitals must hope that the end of the holiday season brings some relief.

Why are fewer hospital admissions coming from the emergency department?

Posted on by • Posted in Admitting, Emergency Care, Emergency Care Acuity, Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Admissions, Hospital Capacity, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Nurses Shortage, State of the Union • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/ad2d38fe8ab3/the-weekly-gist-january-6-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

At a recent health system retreat, the CFO shared data describing a trend we’ve observed at a number of systems: for the past few months, emergency department (ED) volumes have been up, but the percentage of patients admitted through the ED is precipitously down.

The CFO walked to through a run of data to diagnose possible causes of this “uncoupling” of ED visits and inpatient admissions. Overall, the severity of patients coming to the ED was higher compared to 2019, so it didn’t appear that the ED was being flooded with low-level cases that didn’t merit admission. Apart from the recent spike in respiratory illness brought on by the “tripledemic” of flu, COVID and RSV, there wasn’t a noteworthy change in case mix, or the types of patients and conditions being evaluated in the emergency room. (Fewer COVID patients were admitted compared to 2021, but that wasn’t enough to account for the decline.) The physicians staffing the ED hadn’t changed, so a shift in practice patterns was also unlikely. 
 
A physician leader attending the retreat spoke up from the audience: “I can diagnose this for you. I work in the ED, and the problem is we can’t move them. Patients are sitting in the ED, in hallways, in observation, sometimes for days, because we can’t get a bed on the floor. The whole time we are treating them, and many of them get better, and we’re able to discharge them before a bed frees up.”

With nursing shortages and other staffing challenges, many hospitals have been unable to run at full capacity even if the demand for beds is there. So total admissions may be down, even if the hospital feels like it’s bursting at the seams.

The current staffing crisis not only presents a business challenge, but also adversely impacts patient experience, and makes it more difficult to deliver the highest quality care. A good reminder of the complexity of hospital operations, where strain in one part of the system will quickly impact the performance of other parts of the care delivery continuum.

Hospitals average 100% staff turnover every 5 years — Here’s what that costs

Posted on by • Posted in Continuity of Care, Labor Cost Structure, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Retention, Nurse Travelers, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Shortage, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Quality of Care, Talent Competition, Talent Management, Workforce Retention, Workforce Shortages, Workforce Turnover • Leave a comment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/hospitals-average-100-percent-staff-turnover-every-5-years-heres-what-that-costs.html?origin=RCME&utm_source=RCME&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter&oly_enc_id=2893H2397267F7G

Hospitals have been paying astronomical prices for staff turnover, according to the “2022 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report.”

It covers 589,901 healthcare workers and 166,087 registered nurses from 272 facilities and 32 states. Participants were asked to report data on turnover, retention, vacancy rates, recruitment metrics and staffing strategies from January to December 2021. 

The survey found a wide range of helpful figures for understanding the financial fallout of one of healthcare’s hardest labor disruptions:

  • The average hospital lost $7.1 million in 2021 to higher turnover rates.
  • The average hospital loses $5.2 to $9 million on RN turnover yearly.
  • The average turnover cost for a staff RN is $46,100, up more than 15 percent from the 2020 average.
  • The average hospital can save $262,300 per year for each percentage point it drops from its RN turnover rate.
  • To improve margins, hospitals need to control labor costs by decreasing dependence on travel and agency staff, but only 22.7 percent anticipate being able to do so.
  • For every 20 travel RNs eliminated, a hospital can save $4.2 million on average.

In the past 5 years, the average hospital turned over 100.5 percent of its workforce:

  • In 2021, hospitals set a goal of reducing turnover by 4.8 percent. Instead, it increased 6.4 percent and ranged from 5.1 percent to 40.8 percent. The current average hospital turnover rate nationally is 25.9 percent, according to the report.
  • While 72.6 percent of hospitals have a formal nurse retention strategy, less than half of those (44.5 percent) have a measurable goal.
  • Overall, 55.5 percent of hospitals do not have a measurable nurse retention goal.
  • Retirement is the number four reason staff RNs leave, and it is expected to remain a primary driver through 2030. More than half (52.8 percent) of hospitals today have a strategy to retain senior nurses. In 2018, only 21.6 percent had one.

Historically, RN turnover has trended below the hospital average across all staff. For the first time since conducting the survey, this is no longer true: 

  • In the past five years, the average hospital turned over 95.7 percent of its RN workforce.
  • Close to a third (31.0 percent) of all newly hired RNs left within a year, with first year turnover accounting for 27.7 percent of all RN separations. Given the projected surge in retirements, expect to see the more tenured groups edge up creating an inverted bell curve.
  • Operating room RNs continue to be the toughest to recruit, while labor and delivery RNs are trending easier to recruit than in the year prior.
  • Hospitals are experiencing a dramatically higher RN vacancy rate (17 percent) compared to last year’s rate of 9.9 percent.
  • The vast majority (81.3 percent) reported a vacancy rate higher than 10 percent.

Did hospital wage increases come too soon?

Posted on by • Posted in Employee Compensation, Employee Raise, Employee Staffing Shortage, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Retention, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Travelers, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Shortage • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/e44630c5c8c0/the-weekly-gist-december-16-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

It’s been a difficult year for the hospital workforce, both here and around the world, as the effects of the pandemic, the economy, and the legacy of lean staffing models have combined to drive up vacancy rates and threaten the sustainability of hospital operations. 

Everywhere we’ve gone in the past six months, workforce issues have overshadowed every other topic: how can hospitals attract and retain staff given the environment, how can they stabilize finances in the face of 15-20 percent increases in labor costs, how can they safeguard patient care with intense turbulence in the clinical workforce?

This week we heard yet another wrinkle to this problem, one that had not occurred to us but in retrospect is obvious. A system CFO was lamenting the fact that even with big salary increases, the hospital workforce remains unstable. “It’s like we’re not even getting credit for raising base salary 15 percent across the board and giving big retention bonuses.” 
 
As to why—it’s a timing issue. Her system, like many, delivered pay raises back in the late winter and early spring, when staff were still recovering from the Omicron surge and the urgency of reducing reliance on expensive agency labor became clear. But economy-wide inflation had only then begun to spike, and has since continued to be stuck at high levels. 

Staff don’t view the earlier salary increases as a response to inflation, but as predating it—and they’re asking for still more, to offset rising prices for food, transportation and housing. “I wish we’d waited to give the pay bump,” the CFO told us. “Even though our wage increases have outpaced inflation this year, the timing of events didn’t help us at all.” 

With the hospitals operating near capacity, and a severe flu season impacting both patient volumes and staff availability, her sense is that the system is back to square one on staffing—and more difficult financial decisions lie ahead.

Do Hospitals share the blame for the COVID staffing crisis?

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Spend Management, Nurse Retention, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Staffing Ratios, Nurses Shortage, Team-Based Care, Team-Based Care Models • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/e44630c5c8c0/the-weekly-gist-december-16-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

The latest piece in the New York Times ’“Profits over Patients” series focuses on the staffing policies of Ascension, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems, drawing a straight line from its cost-cutting practices over the last decade to its current staffing woes. Like previous articles in the series, the piece hones in on Ascension’s profit-seeking motives, pairing pre-pandemic accounts of Ascension executives boasting about savings from slashed labor costs with story after story of its frontline clinicians struggling to provide adequate patient care once COVID hit.

In responses included in the article, an Ascension spokesperson rejected the idea that the system’s workforce policies were responsible for its current staffing crisis, claiming that Ascension has maintained better staff-to-patient ratios than many of its peers. 

The Gist: Yet again, the New York Times is shining a harsh light on a health system that has been engaged in management practices common across the industry. 

While the piece omits some relevant information, such as the recent spike in labor costs, it’s useful to point out that many hospitals were so thinly staffed prior to COVID that they had virtually no slack in their labor pools, hindering their response to the crisis. 

In our experience, the reasons for this have less to do with lining executives’ pockets, and more to do with the realities of dealing with a worsening payer mix and rising input costs. While future hospital workforce strategy is going to have to focus on reducing dependency on nurses—especially in the inpatient setting—any effort to that end must augment nurses with team-based care models and technology solutions, rather than pushing further on already-tight nurse-to-patient ratios.

The cost of hospital contract labor in 22 numbers

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https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/the-cost-of-hospital-contract-labor-in-22-numbers.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter

Many hospitals and health systems aim to recruit and retain permanent staff to replace contract labor positions, which have seen wages skyrocket because of staff shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Hospitals across the country have relied on contract labor and temporary staffing agencies to support their clinical teams when many burned-out providers are exiting healthcare. An October survey conducted by Bain & Company found that 25 percent of physicians, advanced practice providers and nurses are considering changing careers. Eight-nine percent of the providers thinking about leaving the profession cited burnout as the driving force. 

Staffing shortages are driving labor costs to an unsustainable level for hospitals operating on razor-thin margins and reducing temporary staffing costs is top of the agenda for many financial executives looking to reduce expenses in the coming quarters.

Here are 22 numbers that demonstrate the cost of contact labor for hospitals, according to reports from Kaufman Hall, Definitive Healthcare, Vaya Workforce and big hospital operators:

1. The demand for contract labor increased 500 percent in fall 2021 compared with 2019, according to healthcare staffing services company Vaya Workforce. While demand has since decreased, it is still nearly triple pre-pandemic levels and is projected to remain as high as 20 percent above the 2019 baseline.

2. In 2020, the average amount hospitals spent on contract labor was $4.6 million, more than double the average expense of $2.2 million in 2011, according to a report from Definitive Healthcare, a data and analytics company.

3. Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Mary’s Campus spent $286.8 million on contract labor in 2020, the most of any hospital in the country that year, according to Definitive Healthcare’s analysis of about 3,100 U.S. hospitals

4. From 2019 to 2022, the hourly wage rate for contract nurses increased 106 percent, according to Kaufman Hall. Contract nurses are earning an average of $132 an hour in 2022 versus $64 an hour in 2019. At the height of the pandemic, some travel nurses earned up to $300 an hour, with rates as high as these placing immense pressure on hospital balance sheets.

5. The rise in contract labor from 2019 through March of 2022 led to a 37 percent increase in labor expenses per patient, equating to between $4,009 and $5,494 per adjusted discharge.

6. Hospitals with 25 beds or fewer spent about $460,000 on contract labor in 2020 compared to hospitals with more than 250 beds that spent almost $11 million on average, according to Definitive Healthcare.

7. Hospitals in the western U.S. have the highest contract labor expenses, with an average of $9.6 million reported in 2020. Large cities, high cost of living and high salary rates in the region contribute to this high average.

8. Labor costs were one of the core reasons Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems reported a net loss of $42 million in the third quarter, but CFO Kevin Hammons said he expects to see a 40 percent to 50 percent reduction in contract labor costs next year compared with 2022.

9. Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare reported a 19 percent decrease in contract labor costs in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, allowing the system to absorb much of the market-based wage adjustment costs for its employee workforce, CFO Bill Rutherford said during an Oct. 21 earnings call.  

10. According to Kaufman Hall’s “2022 State of Healthcare Performance Improvement” report, published Oct. 18, 46 percent of hospital and health system leaders identify labor costs as the greatest opportunity for cost reductions. This was significantly up from the 17 percent of respondents who noted labor costs as their greatest opportunity to cut costs last year.

11. There are some hopeful signs that the use of contract labor has stabilized and is steadily falling, according to Kaufman Hall: 44 percent of hospitals in its survey reported that their utilization of contract labor is declining while 29 percent said that it is holding steady.

Massachusetts’ 19K vacant hospital jobs: ‘Our healthcare system has never been more fragile’

Posted on by • Posted in Deferred Healthcare, Demand, Employee Staffing Shortage, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Inflation, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Market Outlook, Market Trends, Market Uncertainty, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Staffing, Nurses Shortage, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Vacancy Rate • Leave a comment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/massachusetts-19k-vacant-hospital-jobs-our-healthcare-system-has-never-been-more-fragile.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter

There are an estimated 19,000 full-time job vacancies across Massachusetts acute care hospitals, according to a survey published Oct. 31 by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association.

Hospitals are working to address backlogs and transfer patients to post-acute care settings while skyrocketing labor costs — including a projected $1 billion in travel labor costs this year — are compounding healthcare facilities’ financial woes, according to the report. These challenges are hampering hospital operations as well as leading to care delays and reduced access to care.

Fewer workers mean that fewer beds are available for patients, while the demand for care increases due to deferred care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the behavioral health crisis and reduced access to community-based services continue to challenge hospitals throughout the state. At any given time, more than 1,500 patients are in acute hospital beds awaiting placement to a specialized behavioral health bed or post-acute care, according to the MHA.

“Our healthcare system has never been more fragile, and its leaders have never been more concerned about what’s to come in months ahead,” Steve Walsh, president and CEO of the MHA, said in an Oct. 31 news release shared with Becker’s Hospital Review. “They are exhausting every option within their control to confront these challenges, but this is an unsustainable reality and providers are in dire need of support.”

In response to the survey, 37 hospitals — representing 70 percent of the state’s total hospital employment — reported 6,650 vacancies among 47 positions critical to hospital operations and clinical care. The positions range from direct care nurses to lab personnel and clinical support staff. Eighteen of the 47 positions have a vacancy rate greater than 20 percent. 

At a 56 percent vacancy rate, licensed practical nurses is the most in-demand position, while home health aides (34 percent), mental health workers (32 percent), infection control nurses (26 percent) and CRNAs (24 percent) are also highly sought after.

Survey respondents identified 6,650 vacancies. The 47 positions included in the survey, which was conducted this summer, account for less than half of all hospital roles. The MHA said it extrapolated that across all positions and hospitals to arrive at an estimated 19,000 vacancies across the state.

Staffing shortages are driving labor costs to an unsustainable level for many hospitals already grappling with margins close to zero or in the red. Hospitals have relied on high-cost temporary staffing to fill critical positions during the pandemic, resulting in average hourly wage rates for travel nurses increasing 90 percent since 2019, according to the report. Massachusetts hospitals reported spending $445 million on temporary registered nurse staffing halfway through the fiscal year, with temporary RN staffing costs increasing 234 percent from fiscal year 2019 to March 2022.

If urgent steps are not taken to address healthcare’s staffing shortage, hospitals will continue to face capacity challenges and overpay for labor, which will lead to fiscal instability, according to Mr. Walsh. 

The MHA urged providers, payers, public officials and government agencies to address the workforce crisis by investing in training and education, expanding the workforce pipeline, providing financial support to hospitals and advancing new models of care such as telehealth and at-home care.