WHEN WAS THE LAST WORKER SHORTAGE IN US PROFESSIONAL

Similar crises have been building in many states. This year, that’s expected to rise to 25% for all hospital medical disciplines, including doctors, respiratory therapists, dieticians and medical assistants, he said. In 2021, the job vacancy rate in Missouri hospitals was over 20%, according to Dave Dillon, a spokesperson for the Missouri Hospital Association.

“We just have increased difficulty in recruiting and attracting folks who want to live and work in a rural area,” said Craig Thompson, CEO of Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare, a rural Missouri health system more than an hour from Kansas City.

WHEN WAS THE LAST WORKER SHORTAGE IN US PROFESSIONAL

Rural and some economically distressed urban areas, which have harder times attracting health care workers, dominate lists of regions federal officials consider “health professional shortage areas.” Primary care doctors are pressed to their financial limits. Stateline Story JPatients Fled Primary Care During COVID-19 That changed this year, as governors talked about boosting recruitment efforts, loosening licensing requirements, expanding training programs and raising providers’ pay, either directly or by increasing Medicaid reimbursements. There have long been shortages of certain health care workers, she said, but governors instead have focused on issues such as opioid misuse, prescription drug prices and mental health. That’s a significant change, said Hemi Tewarson, head of the academy, who until recently was a health policy expert at the National Governors Association. The lack of workers has become so dire that at least 20 governors this year directly addressed the situation in their state of the state speeches, proposing a range of policy fixes, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan forum of state health policymakers.

The pandemic has amplified them, stemming from fatigue after wave after successive waves of patients.” “Leading up to the pandemic there were already significant workforce challenges. “Workforce in health care is an issue of national significance and is reaching a crisis in many parts of the country,” said Akin Demehin, director of policy at the American Hospital Association trade group. There simply aren’t enough workers of all types-doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, lab techs, behavioral health specialists, medical assistants-to fill vacancies, not only in Hawaii, but also across the country.

“This will place a materially increased burden on our existing workforce which has been stretched and strained dramatically during the pandemic, and we risk losing even more of our current permanent workforce which will have a significant impact on the ability of our hospitals and other healthcare institutions,” Raethel wrote to state officials.Įven if the state takes that key step, Raethel said in an interview, the underlying crisis in health care will continue. The state had not extended a waiver of licensing requirements that had been in place for the past two years, noted Hilton Raethel, head of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, which represents the state’s hospitals, skilled nursing centers, assisted living facilities and hospices. Top Hawaii officials last week received an urgent warning: If they didn’t act, the state would lose the services of hundreds of health care workers who have been essential in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic.

When was the last worker shortage in us