Becker's Hospital Review

76 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Mr. Galley said UPMC started the agency for its 40-hospital system not only to combat the nursing shortage — and attract back nurses the health system has lost to outside travel agencies — but also to address increased rates from outside travel agencies. Nurses and surgical techs who qualify for UPMC's in-house agency will earn $85 an hour and $63 an hour, respectively, in addition to a $2,880 stipend at the beginning of each six-week assignment. Compensation for travel nurses at UPMC is still higher than full-time employees because the job comes with its own set of challenges. While full-time nurses get to know their facilities and have a more regular schedule, travel nurses are constantly on the move. "ey're going to have assignments for a few weeks at a time at a partic- ular location, then we're going to pick them up and move them some- where else, so they're going to be constantly traveling, living out of a suitcase, and that's what external travelers do, so we want to be just like the market, create roles like that and pay like that," Mr. Galley said. "I think our employees understand the difference between that kind of a lifestyle that goes along with the higher salary." CommonSpirit's internal agency plans to start traveling this spring and is in the process of hiring a national director for the program. e system's goal is to have 500 nurses. Dr. Sanford said the program will be beneficial because it will bring down competition, and people who want to travel can still be employees within the health system. "It gives nurses who are our employees a choice if they want to be travel- ers or if they want to do it part time and then come back to a job within one of our hospitals or in one of our clinics. … ey won't lose their benefits, they won't lose their seniority. ey'll be our employees," Dr. Sanford said. Other systems are exploring similar programs, such as Charlotte, N.C.- based Atrium Health, which ran a pilot in-house traveler program. e health system has also used outside agencies, which cost about triple compared to pre-pandemic. "is program was very successful, less expensive than using an exter- nal travel agency and worked really well across our large health system that covers multiple states," said Patricia Mook, MSN, RN, vice presi- dent of nursing operations at Atrium Health. But internal travel programs may not be easy for other health systems to mimic, especially smaller ones. Hospitals have to be of a certain size for an internal travel program to work, meaning an individual hospital wouldn't be able to have one, Mr. Galley said. More than that, it's a complex undertaking, he said. "It's not without its challenges," Mr. Galley said. "I just think it's something that takes the resources and thought leadership to be able to do. But you're not going to find independent hospitals being able to mirror this." Dr. Sanford also recommends having a few different strategies in place to combat nurse shortages. "Don't make it your only strategy because there are so many issues that we could do better with our nursing staff. … You need to be looking at all of the different things that give nurses voice in your organization," Dr. Sanford said. n License wait times reach crisis levels for healthcare workers By Molly Gamble L icensing agencies were understaffed and used antiquated workflows pre-pandemic. Now, facing an influx of applicants, the delays are affecting healthcare workers' ability to get to work and patients' access to care, NBC News reported Feb. 12. Healthcare workers, from Wisconsin nurses to New York psychologists, said they are waiting months more than usual for approval to work. NBC News spoke to leaders with nine healthcare professional organiza- tions in three states who said wait times for licenses are worse than they've ever been. Regardless of position or state, licensing and health- care leaders say the solution is increased staffing at licensing agencies. In Wisconsin, healthcare workers say licensing delays have reached a crisis level. The state's Department of Safety and Professional Services licenses more than 200 professions. It was understaffed and overwhelmed before the pandemic and has since fallen further behind on applications, struggled to upgrade to an electronic processing system and struggled to re- tain staff, which the Post-Crescent first reported. The Wisconsin Council on Mental Health has sent two let- ters to their state legislature pleading for increased staffing at the department. "There is an obvious and immediate solution to this: Add necessary positions and pay market wages to at- tract new candidates and retain talent," Jennifer Gar- rett, spokesperson for the Department of Safety and Professional Services, told NBC News. At the Wisconsin licensing agency, staffing is so lean that one worker's illness or parental leave curbs pro- ductivity. Entry-level salaries start around $17 an hour. Licensing wait times are an upstream contributor to workforce constraints that public health and health- care organizations are experiencing and patients' wait times downstream. In New Jersey, for example, social workers are still waiting for licenses they applied for in 2020. "We hear from different organizations — whether they be mental health or domestic violence providers — across the board that because they can't get people who are licensed, there are wait times for services that can be three to five months," Jennifer Thompson, ex- ecutive director of the New Jersey Chapter of the Na- tional Association of Social Workers, told NBC News. n

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