Contract Nurse Agencies Are Making Big Money in the Age of COVID-19. Are They ‘Exploiting’ the Pandemic?

In the 40 years that Jennie Kahn has worked as a registered nurse, the last two have been by far the most grueling. A lot of that is due to COVID-19, which transformed health care facilities, including Thomas Health’s hospital system in Charleston, West Virginia, where Kahn works, into triage centers and forced nurses to take on an extraordinary amount of personal risk and heartache. It’s no mystery why some 18% of health care workers quit their jobs between Feb 2020 and Sept 2021, according to a Morning Consult poll. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But another reason these past two years have been so punishing, Kahn says, is that hospital nursing staffs have been subject to extraordinary churn as thousands of nurses have quit their staff positions to become contract travel nurses, where the pay is often two to four times higher. This rapid turnover has triggered a costly feedback loop: hospital administrators, facing shortages in staff nurses, spend a mint hiring contract nurses, which makes them less able or willing to increase their staff nurses’ pay. So more staff nurses quit to become contract nurses, thus further lowering nurse supply and driving demand for contract nurses. “It is a vicious cycle,” says Kahn, the hospital system’s chief nursing officer. Meanwhile, contract nursing agencies have increased their prices. The advertised pay rate for travel nurses has surged 67% from January 2020 to January 2022, according to ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news