Cassie Jupin grew up wanting to be a nurse. She set her sights on a job at St. Peter’s Health Partners hospital in Albany, Recent York, and landed a position in the identical maternity ward where she was born.
“Knowing that I can come back to work each day and work with a gaggle of girls and those who just make it really easy” has been gratifying, Jupin said. “Like, everybody’s here to aid you.”
Still, when she graduated from nursing school last July, she and her classmates joked about taking travel nurse jobs which paid so much greater than entry-level staff positions.
“They were up in just like the $140s, $150s, depending on the world you were searching,” she explained. The pay wasn’t per day. It was per hour. Â
Over the past 12 months, keeping nurses like Jupin on staff has ranked as essentially the most pressing workforce issue for 90% of CEOs at community hospitals like St. Peter’s, in accordance with a survey by the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Staff shortages
The pandemic has exacerbated nursing staff shortages and resulted in contract nursing rates surging during successive waves of Covid infections. Through the omicron surge within the winter of 2022, national rates spiked to a median of $150 an hour, in accordance with consulting firm Syntellis. That amounted to thrice the national average for full-time staff nurses. Â
As hospitals have change into increasingly reliant on contract nurses, travel nurse expenditures have risen greater than 250% because the start of the pandemic.
“There continues to be significant volatility in hourly wages paid to registered nurses, which represent a big share of overall labor costs,” said Flint Brenton, CEO of Syntellis Performance Solutions.
A nurse instructs a colleague while tending to a Covid patient within the Covid intensive care unit at Leipzig university hospital.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
At the identical time, using high-paid staff from travel-nursing agencies also made for a vicious circle in relation to staffing.
“Agency staff were paid significant salary rates and had complete control of their work schedules,” explained Carol Boston Fleischhauer, managing director and chief nursing officer on the Advisory Board, and as result “more in-house nurses left their everlasting positions for external opportunities, increasing turnover.”
In-house travel nurses
St. Peter’s is an element of Trinity Health System, which has not been proof against the necessity for contract nursing. But Trinity has been in a position to have more control over staff turnover through the use of its own in-house travel nurse program — an concept that stemmed from its own nurses over a decade ago.
“We realized that if we developed our own internal agency, if you happen to will, we could orient people to Trinity Health for all of our hospitals,” said Jennifer Misajet, chief nursing officer at St. Peter’s hospital. Â
That internal program, called First Alternative, grew threefold through the pandemic, as older nurses looked to cut back from full-time work, and younger nurses sought higher pay and greater flexibility over their working conditions.Â
“It is not just like the old days where nurses became inpatient nurses for 30 years. A number of latest graduates expect to work in an inpatient setting for under just a few years, after which they need to get their master’s degree, or change into nurse practitioners,” said Trinity CEO Mike Slubowski.
With nearly 90 hospitals in 26 states, First Alternative has helped Trinity have higher control over its contract nursing costs, while also maintaining ties with nurses who might help them maintain a consistent quality of care.
“In the event that they desired to work in a unique location, for instance, go to Fresno, California, or Boise, Idaho, to cover, you already know, we’ve the identical clinical information system all over the place … and so there is a familiarity with providing care inside that environment,” Slubowski said.
With greater than 30,000 registered nurses in its system, nearly 1 in 10 of Trinity’s nurses currently work through First Alternative. That now includes a couple of dozen senior leaders like Misajet at St. Peter’s.
“We actually tried to satisfy our nurses where they’re, and so they’re in other places,” Misajet said. In her case, she’s gone part-time somewhat than retire, with a purpose to spend more time together with her family. Â Â
Paying more
Analysts say more hospitals are following Trinity’s lead and starting their very own internal staffing programs to chop down on agency contract labor costs. At the identical time, they’re also facing higher costs to carry on to their full-time staff nurses. Trinity boosted staff salaries by 5.5% in 2022, in accordance with its latest financial statements.
For brand spanking new nurses like Jupin, who may be tempted by high-paying travel nurse jobs, the message from hospital leadership is obvious. Â
“They don’t need to see you walk away — especially our manager,” the maternity nurse said. “The very first thing she’s at all times told us is ‘please come to us if you happen to need anything, because we wish you guys here for the long term.'”
Higher pay and staffing conditions remain the highest concerns for many nurses, in accordance with a recent survey by the American Nurses Association, but for greater than half of them, flexibility can also be key. Increasingly, it’s proving to be key for hospital systems like Trinity, too.
