St. Charles Health System cutting back on ‘traveling nurses’ contracts to stem losses from pandemic

(Update: Incorporating video clip, remarks from St. Charles chief running officer, ONA spokesman)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — St. Charles Health and fitness System is cutting back again on the contracted “touring nurses” careers added in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic’s important staffing concerns, as they get the job done to stability the books amid working losses and bleak economical final results reported by hospitals throughout the point out.

NewsChannel 21 achieved out to the firm this 7 days just after a regional girl contacted us, indicating her husband’s surgical treatment just lately was canceled, just hrs ahead of it was scheduled to consider position.

The person reported he was informed by his physician about the touring nurse layoffs and that he’d be much better off finding surgery elsewhere thanks to lack of bed house for his 1-night continue to be.

Oregon Nurses Association Communications Manager Kevin Mealy instructed NewsChannel 21 Wednesday, “There are about 300-plus vacant nursing positions at Saint Charles Bend by itself, and so travelers participate in a vital purpose in assisting fill that hole.”

St. Charles Health Process Chief Functioning Officer Iman Simmons said journey nurses fill gaps in employment when entire-time employees just take prolonged leaves of absence, for case in point.

“We use nurse vacationers to fill in like when another person goes on loved ones leave,” she stated. “A long term staff member is missing from the staffing blend, so we hire or convey on our nurse travelers.”

The enhancement will come as a report unveiled by Oregon hospitals say they finished 2022 in the crimson because of to staffing shortages, climbing fees and stalled earnings.

As component of their moves to stem the crimson ink, St. Charles is cutting again on using increased-priced traveling nurses, bringing the figures down to what they get in touch with a standard pre-pandemic level.

Nevertheless the Oregon Nurses Affiliation signifies full-time workers, not short-term deal personnel, they you should not welcome the information, stating it could make a challenging situation worse.

Mealy spelled out, “We had been previously at a Code Purple problem with nurse staffing in Bend, and shedding a lot more staff members just puts us deeper in a gap.”

Simmons explained, “Our vacancy amount for all of nursing is at 20 p.c.”

Whilst St. Charles is reducing back again on hiring extra nurse vacationers for now, they say a lot are still helping vital sections of the 4 hospitals.

“We at this time have a zero emptiness fee in our essential treatment nursing areas,” Simmons stated. “So it can be an uneven amount of vacancy throughout nursing, with the best proportion getting procedural and ‘med surge,’ or acute treatment nursing.”

Although rescheduling and even canceling of surgical procedures is not unusual, the deficiency of staff members and mattress place is a worry.

Simmons additional that pushing absent individuals is never a measure they want to consider.

“If the medical procedures was canceled for the reason that we did not have a bed for the client to recuperate — we function difficult to prevent that,” she reported. “So if a client is recovering and is completely ready to be discharged house, or discharged to a proficient nursing facility, we try out to make certain that comes about in a timely way.”

Mealy claimed, “And with Saint Charles, we know they are by now closing off beds because they don’t have plenty of team to care for clients.”

In a assertion supplied previously to NewsChannel 21 Simmons stated, “St. Charles is actively working to reduce its reliance on high-priced contract labor as part of its pandemic recovery ideas. Retaining our remarkably trained workforce and recruiting new everlasting workers are a single of the crucial techniques required to our prolonged-time period money viability, as effectively as the ongoing provision of the optimum quality of client care.”

“We have made important progress in choosing medical caregivers and our emptiness fee for nursing positions is the most affordable it has been in many decades,” Simmons extra. “We are continually checking our staffing stages and will near client beds and adjust surgical procedures and course of action schedules as needed. As often, affected person basic safety is our prime precedence.”

The momentary selecting of dozens of better-paid out deal nurses — some by the clinic, other individuals provided by the condition — arrived amid a pandemic that in the summer months of 2021 had 93 {33c86113bcc32821f63c6372852a0f501e07fff55ce3ce61b15b246c5f8c531c} of Oregon’s medical center beds occupied. The Countrywide Guard also was named in to support workers hospitals in various means and to guide at mass vaccination clinics. And several elective surgical procedures were canceled or delayed for many months.

Lately, in a unusual, unified move, the state’s hospitals and overall health-skilled unions agreed, after months of negotiations, on proposals to state lawmakers that would make Oregon the very first state in the nation to set nurse-to-individual staffing ratios, amongst other steps.