Nearly 10% of Wisconsin hospital jobs are vacant, almost double the rate from early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a workforce shortage that remains critical as an aging population demands more care, says a report Monday by the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
Licensed practical nurses have the highest vacancy rate, at 18%, followed by certified registered nurse anesthetists, at 14%, and certified nursing assistants, or CNAs, at more than 12%.
The state’s vacancy rate for registered nurses, who make up half of the hospital workforce, is 10%, higher than in previous years but lower than the national rate of 16%.
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“Wisconsin hospitals are working hard to grow, recruit, retain and support the health care workforce necessary to sustain the high-quality health care Wisconsin citizens expect and deserve,” Ann Zenk, a senior vice president at WHA, said in a statement. “But even with intense effort, it is unlikely that the health care workforce can grow fast enough to meet the rising health care demand of an aging population.”
The report — which mostly uses data from September 2022, the most recent period available — comes after Gov. Tony Evers in January announced a Task Force on the Healthcare Workforce, with Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, a registered nurse, serving as chair. Task force members, announced in February, include leaders of state health agencies and statewide health care organizations — along with administrators at some hospitals, such as Shawn Lerch, CEO of Sauk Prairie Healthcare, and Sharon Cox, chief nursing officer at Beloit Health System.
In January, Springfield, Illinois-based Hospital Sisters Health System said it was closing HSHS St. Joseph Hospital in Chippewa Falls and HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire. Physician partner Prevea Health said it would also close its locations in western Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley.
The Chippewa Falls hospital is expected to close March 22 and the Eau Claire hospital is expected to close April 21. HSHS cited “prolonged operational and financial stress related to lingering impacts of the pandemic, inflation, workforce constraints, local market challenges and other industry-wide trends.”
The WHA report refers to the HSHS closures as “unthinkable.”
“Staff shortages are part of a cascade of challenges — a vicious cycle that includes rising workforce costs without concomitant reimbursement increases, workforce and financial limits on capacity and services, and even the unthinkable — the first hospital closures in Wisconsin in more than a decade,” the report says.
“Hospitals and health systems must have help to break this treacherous feedback loop,” the report says.
The overall hospital job vacancy rate in September 2022 was 9.9%, the same as a year earlier and up from 5.3% in September 2020 and 5.7% in September 2019.
Data from September 2023 is not available. Zenk said hospitals are relying less on staffing agencies, which could indicate a declining job vacancy rate. But retirements, competition for workers and increased demand for care continue to present challenges, she said.
CNAs have the lowest share of workers age 55 or older among 18 professions tracked by the report. But they also have the highest job turnover rate, with more than 35% changing jobs in 2022. Lab and pharmacy technicians also have high turnover rates.
The number of registered nurses licensed in Wisconsin grew 14% from 2020 to 2022, to nearly 119,000, which WHA attributes to expanded opportunities at nursing schools and employers. The number of advanced practice nurses increased 41%, to about 10,800.
But the uptick includes retired nurses. The annual growth of 2,666 working nurses is “far from the projected annual growth of 4,000 needed to meet demand in the coming decade,” the report says.
WHA has started a So Many Options campaign to boost interest in health care careers. It recommends expanding training opportunities, such as a nurse apprenticeship program started last year by UW Health and Madison Area Technical College.
The report says a declining number of nursing home beds and a nursing home staffing shortage is straining hospital staff because patients ready to be discharged to nursing homes end up staying in hospitals longer while waiting for beds.
A bill that passed the state Senate health committee last week aims to improve the discharge bottleneck by awarding grants for partnerships between hospitals and nursing homes for patients with complex needs.
The measure, which previously passed the Assembly, would create an alternative to guardianship by letting a patient representative consent to admission to a nursing home from a hospital. Disability groups oppose the proposal, saying it could put people in dangerous or neglectful situations.