As the delta variant crashed down on Idaho last fall, a hospital staffing shortage turned into a staffing crisis and gave way to an expensive swap.
Hospitals would lose nurses to lucrative, short-term gigs with staffing agencies that offered upwards of $4,600 to $8,000 per week, sometimes with housing allowance on top of the wages. And every time a nurse left, their job had to be filled. So, hospitals turned to those same staffing agencies to fill job openings, and the agencies charged the hospitals a premium on top of the worker’s own wages and benefits.
