July 19, 2022 – As the hospitalization rates of COVID-positive patients grow, the chronic shortage of registered nurses continues to get worse. According to a report from The New York Times, the “daily average number of people in hospitals who are infected with the coronavirus now exceeds 39,000, the highest it has been since the waning days of the first omicron surge in early March.”
Hospitals across the areas, in rural and urban areas, are still having trouble finding enough nurses. For example, the report says that nearly 14% of nursing jobs at acute care hospitals in Massachusetts are unfilled.
To help close these gaps, hospitals are offering financial incentives for new hires. Broward Health, a healthcare system in Florida, is trying to fill 400 vacant nursing positions by offering bonuses up to $20,000. Because of these incentives, some hospitals have to cut other services that they cannot adequately staff.
Demand for nurses is projected to keep growing significantly in the United States. The McKinsey consulting firm projected in a report in May that the nation could face a shortage of up to 450,000 nurses by 2025.
Demand for travel nurses, who are brought in from out of town by staffing agencies to fill gaps at hospitals for a few weeks or months, climbed to a record high in 2021, and after receding somewhat earlier this year, has been rising steadily again since May, according to April Hansen, group president at Aya Healthcare, one of the nation’s major providers of travel nurses.