Wayne County and surrounding areas have been grappling with a nursing shortage that is causing a ripple effect of rising health care costs and lower quality of life across the country.
Lingering nurse burnout from the pandemic, an aging population, inadequate nursing school capacity, and prolonged delays in employment-based immigration have left significant gaps.
On Tuesday (1/7/25), after numerous rumors of cutbacks, Rochester Regional Health (RRH) issued a press release stating they are working to re-align its nursing teams to reduce reliance on costly contracted agency nurses.
In an effort to accomplish this, RRH says it will lead to potential temporary reductions in the number of in-patient beds at select hospitals including Rochester General Hospital, Unity Hospital, and Newark-Wayne Community Hospital.
Following a study, it was determined that the practice of contract nursing was getting out of hand. In the absence of a steady nursing workforce, RRH and other health care networks began a practice of contracting nurses to fill in gaps in nursing services. Contracts were signed bringing in free-lance nurses, some from out of area sites. The contracts, usually for a set period of 13 weeks, paid the temporary employees anywhere from $100 to $150 per hour. This meant a contract worker on a 12 hour shift made anywhere from $1000 to $1500 per shift and a hefty work paycheck.
Some of the further out-of-area nursing temporaries would rent out temporary housing for the length of the contract and often re-signed contacts to continue the employment.
Some, more local contract nurses would simply drive home after their shift.
This also lead to full and part time nurses balking at working their regular pay schedule and led to area strikes.
The base pay range for a full-time registered nurse at Newark-Wayne Community Hospital is $37-50/hour, plus additional benefits and pay enhancements like tuition repayment, etc.
While it was true that contract nurses did not receive these pay benefits, the large contract sums more that enticed the ‘contract nurse’ pathway.
The nurse-contract payments were unsustainable in the health care systems, especially in light of more area nurses choosing to work under short-term contract positions.
In a Tuesday (1/7/25) interview with Daniel Ireland, RRH’s President and Chief Operating Officer for Finger Lakes rural hospitals stated "Adjustments are in place at three local hospitals amid nursing staff shortages.
In order to ensure that we provide the safe patient care and appropriately staff the beds, we will sometimes limit the number of beds on any one of our medical surgical units,” Ireland explained.
Wait times to admit a patient into a hospital room surged to 11 hour and recently reduced wait time to 6 hours, in either the emergency room, or hallways of the hospital.
RRH said it’s working to "re-align" nursing teams at Rochester General, Unity and Newark-Wayne hospitals to "reduce reliance on costly contracted agency nurses" and hire permanent staff. The health system said this has been a continuous challenge since the pandemic began.
In short, it became a Catch 22 situation. Catch-22 is a term for an irrational, circular, and impossible situation, often used to describe a paradox or a hidden difficulty. It originated from a novel by Joseph Heller about a World War II pilot who could not escape combat duty because he was sane and insane at the same time.
The measures went into place at the three hospitals last month to reduce dependency on agency nurses, according to Ireland. He explained the health system hasn’t eliminated or cut anyone from their contracts, but began efforts to not renew contracts for agency nurses.
RRH’s new policy stated that no new contracts would be given to any nurse living within a 75 mile range of the hospital. Those nurses would be offered a full-time job at the prevailing pay rates. RRH has had some luck with bringing some agency nurses to the core staff, Ireland said, and is actively recruiting and will be offering what he described as attractive wage and benefit opportunities.
"Some (agency nurses) have taken that opportunity,” Ireland said. “But with that, you sometimes will see the staffing levels drop below what we what we forecast them to be.”
The number of beds currently reduced is unknown. Ireland said reductions will be determined on a week-to-week basis."
"It is a process, it’s not a light switch,” Ireland said. "Are we able to, you know, maybe limit a few more beds for a short period of time, with the goal that eventually we’re going to recruit staff back into them? There are many factors that go involved in that."
"We have worked to reduce our dependency on agency through recruitment and retention strategies, and really aligning with our local schools,” Ireland said.
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