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Andy Hedgpeth: CoxHealth is augmenting local hiring efforts with overseas nurses.
Andy Hedgpeth: CoxHealth is augmenting local hiring efforts with overseas nurses.

Stakeholders find fixes for nursing shortage

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The numbers are getting unhealthy.

A report by the Missouri Hospital Association last year found an estimated need of 117 registered nurses per year through 2022 in the seven-county Ozark Workforce Investment Area, which includes Greene County. The turnover rate among nurses in the region is 17.4 percent, nearly two percentage points higher than the state average, according to the report.

To address the need for nurses, local health care organizations and higher education institutions are working to put stopgap measures in place.

CoxHealth, Mercy Springfield Communities, Missouri State and Southwest Baptist universities, and Ozarks Technical Community College are among organizations working to gain ground on the issue officials say likely won’t let up for several years.

Andy Hedgpeth, vice president of human resources for CoxHealth, said the issue can be traced largely to baby boomers.

“There’s not this huge influx of millennials to offset them,” he said, citing the widely reported U.S. Department of Labor stat that 10,000 boomers retire every day. “Despite everything that we’re doing with loan forgiveness, incentive pay, tuition reimbursement, sign-on bonuses, there still are not enough nurses coming out of programs to be able to fill the need.”

At Mercy Springfield Communities, Chief Nursing Officer Lisa Person points to another factor: an increasingly mobile workforce. Staff nurses are taking traveling positions or applying for newer jobs like navigator or on-call roles.

“We have lost several nurses who have joined travel nurse organizations,” she said.

It goes both ways.

“We actually have had to hire some travel nurses to backfill positions that nurses have left either for career moves or to go travel themselves. It’s kind of a circular movement,” Person said.

The bottom line: Both health systems are short on nurses.

CoxHealth, which employs roughly 2,000 nurses, could stand to hire another 375, and Mercy Springfield Communities is seeking another 200 registered nurses to its current slate of 1,200. CoxHealth’s nursing turnover rate is 14-16 percent, slightly below the 16.6 percent rate for Mercy’s local operations, officials said.

Financially, nurse pay is up almost 2 percent both in Missouri and nationally, according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But in-state pay is some $10,000 below the U.S. annual average of $71,000 for registered nurses as of May 2015.

Creative hiring
The health systems aren’t sitting on their haunches. As the situation worsens, officials are taking sometimes-creative steps to meet demands.

Later this month, the first of some 100 nurses hired from overseas – largely from the Philippines – are expected to arrive at CoxHealth. Hedgpeth said the recruiting effort was needed – even after working through all the local hiring channels.

“There’s just not enough American workers,” he said. “We made the decision to look internationally. This is not something new to health care, but it’s newer to the Ozarks.”

CoxHealth worked with staffing agencies Adex Medical Staffing LLC and Healthcare Resources International LLC to find qualified workers who have at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing. The agency-recruited nurses also have a 95 percent retention rate, Hedgpeth said.

Nurses from countries including China, India and Ireland will be arriving over the next 18 months, and CoxHealth hired an international talent coordinator with a background in social work to help them acclimate to the Ozarks. MSU is helping CoxHealth employees in the areas of diversity and cultural awareness.

“They’re able to join our culture, and we think it’s a winning equation,” Hedgpeth said. “We are not trying to replace our workforce.”

Nurse training center
At Mercy, recruitment efforts and competitive wages are key to filling nursing needs.

Crucial to that effort is the Mercy College of Nursing and Health Sciences of Southwest Baptist University.

College Dean Kezia Lilly, who has bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in nursing fields, said 80 percent of graduates go on to work for Mercy. But it’s not enough.

“It creates a seamless transition for them,” she said but noted 250 students per year doesn’t meet Mercy’s need.

A new nursing and health sciences training center is expected to help.

The 15,000-square-foot center – at 1265 E. Lark Street around the block from the current Springfield campus – is scheduled to open Sept. 20 with seven learning resource center rooms, simulation labs and additional classrooms. The experience is designed to mimic functions at Mercy.

Lilly said the purchase of the building and new equipment, as well as the renovation of the former DirectBuy of the Ozarks building, represented a $4 million investment.

“In order to train them, we needed a better training center,” she said.

SBU also recently received a $230,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, giving the Mercy College of Nursing and Health Sciences another tool to recruit nursing students.

The Nurse Faculty Loan Program through the Health Resources and Services Administration division of the HHS forgives up to 85 percent of loans for students who become a full-time nurse faculty member at any accredited university in the United States.   

CoxHealth, too, is utilizing educational partnerships in its quest to bring more nurses on board.

In August, CoxHealth announced it was teaming up with OTC to establish an associate of science in nursing program at the community college’s Table Rock campus in Hollister. Starting in fall 2017, the program is expected to produce 24 nursing graduates per year who would then be eligible to take the RN exam.

At OTC’s Springfield campus, the college offers hybrid and seated associate of science in nursing programs, which graduate roughly 50 students annually.

Measures taken so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Officials agree more services and programs are needed to continually address the problem.

“I think health care as a whole will be dealing with this issue for much more than the foreseeable future,” Hedgpeth said.

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