September 1, 2021 – According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, higher crisis pay is “exacerbating a chronic shortage of permanent medical staff across the country,” a shortage that existed before the pandemic and isn’t just relegated to nurses.
Before the pandemic, a nurse named Ivette Palomeque reportedly made $45 an hour, which has been bumped to $120 an hour. Palomeque has worked as a travel nurse for the past 16 months, taking high-paid crisis contracts across the country.
COVID-19 has radically transformed the job market for healthcare staff. As emergency rooms continue to fill up with sick patients, healthcare workers are feeling the pressure and exhaustion brought on by months of COVID-19 surges and taking care of critically ill patients. Travel-nurse pay has also surged, brought on in part by federal emergency funding to hospitals.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “in December 2019, average gross weekly wages for a travel nurse were around 1,600 a week … One year later, average pay was more than $3,500 a week.”
Healthcare staff shortages are nothing new for hospitals, but the pressure of the pandemic has created a unique environment that wears down healthcare workers. Harris Health System in Houston is experiencing vacancies “across bedside nursing positions [at] about 22%, up from 8% before the pandemic.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the “National Institutes of Health estimates that there was a shortage of about one million nurses in the U.S. in 2020.”
With the Delta variant ripping through the United States, pay is rising again for nurses. This could prove to be the fatal blow for smaller health systems who are unable to pay competitive rates for nurses. Once the crisis contracts are done, these nurses will likely not want to return to staff jobs.
Rachel Norton, a travel nurse since 2019, said, “Once nurses are done with a crisis contract, they don’t want to go back to the bedside where they know they’re going to be short-staffed and underpaid.”
The Phoebe Putney Health System has four hospitals in Southwest Georgia, where they added two ICUs in the past few weeks. The report says “for every additional intensive-care bed, Phoebe Putney needs about four more nurses,” which will become costly as more ICUs are added. Phoebe Putney has attempted to extend contracts for travel nurses, which could mean offering a higher wage to convince nurses to stick around.
Phoebe Putney’s CEO Scott Steiner said, “We’re living for the moment right now. That’s not a good thing.”