Top 5 Nurse Staffing Stories of 2021

Legislating staffing requirements and one nurse leader's laser-focus on new nurses were among the most-read HealthLeaders nurse staffing stories.

Staffing is, and will continue to be for some time, front and center for nurse leaders.

The situation has reached catastrophic levels, with the American Nurses Association (ANA) asking the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to declare the current nurse staffing shortage a national crisis and take concrete action.

Nurse staffing has been a frequent subject on HealthLeaders. These are the top 5 nurse staffing stories posted on HealthLeaders during 2021:

AHA Calls on FTC to Examine Pricing for Traveling Nurses

COVID-19 has made nurses more in demand than ever, forcing some hospitals to pay traveling nurses as much as $12,000 weekly and prompting the American Hospital Association (AHA) to ask the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate reports of anticompetitive pricing by nurse-staffing agencies.

"The AHA has received reports from hospitals across the nation that nurse-staffing agencies, which supply desperately needed staff to care for patients suffering from the COVID-19 virus and other conditions that require hospitalization, are engaged in anticompetitive pricing," Melinda R. Hatton, AHA general counsel, said in a letter to Rebecca Slaughter, acting chairwoman of the FTC.

"Such outrageous rate hikes appear to be naked attempts to exploit the pandemic by charging supracompetitive prices to desperate hospitals," the AHA letter stated.

New-Nurse Turnover is Common. A Nurse Leader at Indiana University Health is Working to Change That

With newly licensed RN turnover rates ranging between 17% and 30% their first year, and 30% to 57% by their second year, according to different studies, one nurse leader has taken a vigorous approach to handling her nurses' concerns long before they become disenchanted enough to leave.

Brigitte Nastally, MSN, RN, clinical operations manager for Indiana University Health, schedules regular and frequent one-to-one meetings with first-year nurses, going far beyond the number of meetings recommended by the health system's human resources (HR) department.

HR's onboarding includes 30-, 60-, and 90-day meetings with managers, but Nastally extends that to four, five, and six months, and beyond, and follows annual performance reviews with additional post-reviews at three months and six months, she says.

"We schedule these meetings as priorities in my calendar," she says. "These are not 'extra' meetings in my mind, as it's so important to get to know my team and their strengths."

Congressional Bill Seeks to Set Federal Nurse-to-Patient Staffing Requirements

A Congressional bill was introduced in May that sets minimum nurse-to-patient staffing requirements and provides whistleblower protections for nurses who report violations to those rules.

The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act gives hospitals two years—and rural hospitals four years—to develop and implement nurse staffing plans that meet minimum RN-to-patient ratios.

A hospital would be required during each shift, except during a declared emergency, to assign a direct care RN to no more than a particular number of patients in designated units, including:

• 1 patient in an operating room and trauma emergency unit

• 2 patients in all critical care units, intensive care, labor and delivery, post-anesthesia, and burn units

• 3 patients in ante-partum, emergency, pediatrics, step-down, and telemetry units

Contract Nurse Pay-Rate Data Made Available to All Hospitals and Health Systems

As nurses quit across the country, hospitals and health systems that rely more on contract labor and are finding ongoing volatility in contract wages.

Online job postings in ICUs across the country have weekly salaries listed of up to $6,000 a week, making imperative that hospitals understand how their rates compare to others within their market. 

Hallmark Health Care Solutions (HHCS), a healthcare consulting and technology firm headquartered in New York City, is providing the industry with real-time hourly nurse rates as well as benchmark rates for more than 300 clinical and non-clinical roles.

Upon request, organizations automatically receive two separate reports. The first report contains real-time nurse rate data which is immediately actionable; the second is the Einstein II Semi-Annual Rate Report which contains three benchmarking data sets—clinical rates, allied-health rates, and non-clinical rates.

Nurse Practitioners Top List of Most Recruited Providers

For the first time, nurse practitioners (NPs) topped the list of most recruited providers in an annual report on physician and advanced practitioner recruiting trends.

The 2021 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives indicates that over a 12-month period, Merritt Hawkins, a medical search firm and a company of AMN Healthcare, conducted more search engagements for NPs than for any other type of provider.  

The report indicated that 18% of search assignments were for advanced practitioners, including NPs, physician assistants (PAs), and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), up from 13% the previous year. This is the highest percentage in the 28 years the Review has been conducted.

In the 27 years prior, physicians held the top spot of the report; in the last 14 years, the No. 1 position was held by family physicians.