U.S. hospitals struggle to match pay as staff flees omicron

U.S. hospitals are struggling to get the workers they need to treat patients through the winter’s COVID-19 surge as the virus collides with a historically tight labor market.

High demand for labor throughout the economy is making it harder to find replacements for doctors, nurses and support staff who have been sidelined by the omicron variant. It’s especially tough in small towns and rural areas with aging populations and fewer people entering the workforce.

Finding sufficient staff is a daily challenge industry veterans say is harder than any time they can remember. Job openings in health care and social assistance are more than double their pandemic lows, and a record number of people are quitting.

“This is the most significant labor shortage that we have ever seen,” said Sally Zuel, vice president of human resources at Union Health in Terre Haute, Indiana.

As a result, wages are climbing skyward: In November hospitals’ labor expense per patient was 26% above the pre-COVID level two years earlier, according to data from consulting firm Kaufman Hall.

The workforce squeeze is upending every aspect of care. A Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hospital temporarily closed its labor and delivery unit due to staff shortages. The chief executive of a 25-bed facility in rural Nebraska monitored patients on the floor himself Monday. In Indiana, where the National Guard was called in to reinforce hospital staff, administrators offer double pay to workers to extend their shifts when colleagues are sick.

“We’ve had more staff out because they’ve tested positive and have contracted COVID than we did at the very beginning,” said Lynda Shrock, vice president of human resources at Logansport Memorial Hospital in Logansport, Indiana.

Long before the arrival of COVID, doctors and nurses were in high demand. The pandemic has only made that shortage worse as some health-care workers, depleted by two years fighting COVID, opt for early retirement.

Others are trading permanent positions for lucrative short-term travel assignments at premium pay, driving up labor costs. Three out of four health-care facilities were looking for temporary allied health professionals — a category that includes clinical workers who aren’t doctors, nurses or advanced practitioners — according to a December survey by staffing company AMN Healthcare.

Beyond shortages of clinical professionals, it has become tougher to hire and retain workers in other roles essential to keeping medical centers running, from technicians to food service workers to the people who prep rooms in between patients, hospital officials say. To fill those positions, it’s increasingly necessary to compete on wages with other industries even while persuading workers that they can safely prepare food or clean floors inside health-care buildings during a pandemic.

In Terre Haute, Indiana, Zuel scrambles to get adequate coverage for each 12-hour shift. The health system, with about 3,000 employees, recently decided to move nurses from support positions into direct patient care. Radiology and lab technicians, phlebotomists and respiratory therapists are all hard to find.

Some relief arrived in uniform in December: The state sent a couple of medics and other support staff from the National Guard. They mostly work in the emergency department, where every morning patients wait for hospital beds to open. Others work in nutrition.

The current COVID surge in the area isn’t expected to subside before February.