YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
Latasha Harris used to be a travel nurse, but in 2019, she decided it was time to take the next step. She started Springfield-based travel nurse agency Nurse Hustle Recruitment LLC to fill a workforce need that’s projected for the foreseeable future and to help travel nurses get fair pay.
“I decided that I wanted to start my own agency because I saw a lot of travel nurses get ripped off,” Harris said. “The agencies would take more than they should from the nurse. I wanted to start a transparent agency. I wanted to share that traveling nursing experience with my co-workers and all the nurses that I met along the way.”
Nurses that travel to hospitals around the country accept short-term nursing assignments that are typically paid an hourly rate that’s higher than a staff nurse’s hourly rate to compensate for travel costs and the lack of benefits. Hospitals typically work with a managed service provider to contract with agencies, like Harris’ Nurse Hustle Recruitment, to hire travel nurses.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and health facilities across the country were noting a shortage of nurses to fill vacancies, but post-pandemic, the shortage hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment projections, over 203,000 registered nurse openings are expected each year through 2031. Even with BLS’ projections of a 6% growth in the nurse workforce by then, it’s still expected to be shy of the needed workers by 7,800 vacancies a year.
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the shortage was caused due to varying factors including the pandemic, school enrollment not growing fast enough to support the need caused by aging baby boomers, a significant part of the nursing workforce reaching retirement age and salary changes amid record inflation rates.
Harris said 2022 was her agency’s best year, with $4.5 million in sales and an average of 60 nurses working at a time. However, in a post-pandemic world, things are changing in how hospitals are filling and paying for the shortages. Harris’ agency is on pace for a decrease in sales – by over half at about $2.2 million in 2023 – as the local hospitals are turning to other options for bridging the workforce gap. She currently has an average of 40 nurses at a time.
Gig nursing
Mercy Springfield Communities is utilizing its own platform to find nurses who want flexible hours, in addition to float pool nurses, which are on-demand nurses employed directly by Mercy. Marie Moore, chief nursing officer, said Mercy developed an internal app, Mercy Works on Demand, that “gig nurses” can utilize. She said it works much like other on-demand work services apps, such as Uber, but specifically for health care jobs within the Mercy system. Mercy launched the app in early 2022.
“They can essentially live anywhere, but they are Mercy nurses,” Moore said. “They don’t obtain benefits through us, and their only requirement is to pick up one shift in 90 days. They can pick up shifts at any location, any time, any day of the week. It’s very fluid.”
Mercy’s nursing workforce currently comprises 70% full- and part-time Mercy nurses, 18% gig or flex nurses, 10% outside agency/contracted nurses and the remaining 2% are PRNs or nurses that are called in as need arises. Mercy did not disclose the pay difference between these types of nurses.
Moore said besides focusing on flexible options, such as the float pool or gig nurses, Mercy is also forming partnerships with colleges and providing clinicals to “integrate earlier and financially support people to go into the health care field.” The results are new scholarship and tuition reimbursement programs, she said, noting Mercy also has increased hourly pay in 2022 as the market increases, which has helped with its nursing turnover rate, currently at 16%, which is down 12% in the past year.
Moore said Mercy is trying to become less dependent on the outside market pressures and they want to grow employment from within the community.
Increasing internal staffing
Along with Mercy, CoxHealth and Citizens Memorial Hospital are working to find various ways to retain talent to bridge the ongoing nurse hiring gap.
Citizens Memorial Hospital is trying to move away from using agencies and going back to the traditional hiring model, said Sarah Hanak, chief nursing officer.
“This calendar year, and coming completely out of the pandemic, our focus has been, how do we reduce agency hours?” she said. “How do we reduce the number of agencies that we are needing to utilize?”
Hanak said CMH currently uses less than 5% of its workforce through an agency as temporary staff and that long-term travel nursing is not financially sustainable. In southwest Missouri, specialty travel nurse agencies are paid around $100 per hour and nonspecialized $85-$90. Even with fantastic agency nurses, she said, optimal patient outcomes come from having nurses who are regularly on rotation. She said staff acute care nurses in southwest Missouri get paid an average of $24-$28 per hour.
CMH’s approach, like Mercy Springfield Communities, has been paying students back for their education, if the nursing students come to work at CMH.
“While they’re in nursing school, they may only get to see a clinic once or twice, or they may only get to see a specialty area once or twice,” Hanak said, “but when they’re in the apprentice program, we actually pay them to go out, whether it be home care and hospice, long-term care or clinic surgery.”
Alicia Allen, CoxHealth’s Springfield Hospital Group vice president of nursing, said the health system has found a big incentive for retaining nursing talent: the Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. It’s meant to be the gold standard for nursing employers.
“When a nurse sees that designation, they know it is a health system that prioritizes nurses and their opinions in their day-to-day operations,” Allen said.
Additionally, CoxHealth in June launched a Virtual Care Team to aid the bedside staff, including nurses, with the use of technology.
CoxHealth employs about 3,000 registered nurses and 200 licensed practical nurses, plus 100 travel nurses. Allen said that’s a 70% decrease in travel nurses from the peak of the pandemic.
Future of creative staffing
Harris said the concept of travel nursing has changed since the pandemic, as travel nurses were getting paid higher due to demand.
Harris said many of her travel nurses during the pandemic were making around $120 an hour, whereas in 2023, they are getting about $70 per hour. She said the nurses, and agencies like Nurse Hustle Recruiters, understand why the pay is drastically different.
All three hospital representatives confirmed that pay has decreased for travel nurses post-pandemic.
“I know where they’re at, because I know that the government was very involved when it came down to finances for those two years,” she said. “They had to be or we would’ve all gone under. But now we’re back to reality. COVID-19 is not a threat. It’s almost a part of us now. We’re still making good money, right, we’re nurses. Those two years really had us up in the clouds.”
Although Harris said there is a decrease in the current demand for travel nurses, her agency plans to focus on where there’s need – and she’s eyeing long-term care facilities.
“It’s going to be a lot of pivoting,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot of change and a lot of processes changing.”
Moseley’s Discount Office Products was purchased; Side Chick opened in Branson; and the Springfield franchise store of NoBaked Cookie Dough changed ownership.
