As nursing homes continue to see a high turnover rate among registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants, operators continue to do anything they can to keep staff, including offering pay increases, incentives and educational benefits.
Some leaders in the industry see the international staff pool as the sector’s best chance to get through the workforce crisis it currently faces. The only problem is that many are finding the current 18-month work visa application process unworkable.
“I would like visas from the Philippines to be opened up immediately, that was something that was going on in the 90’s,” Mozart Healthcare CEO Archie Shkop told Skilled Nursing News.
Shkop doesn’t feel the industry’s workforce shortage is something that can be solved domestically.
Employment in health care is down by 524,000 since February 2020, with nursing and residential care facilities accounting for about four-fifths of the loss, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics September employment report.
Meanwhile the current visa application process continues to frustrate operators with its lack of expediency.
“There was a very simple process. Now the application is 18 months and I want it down to under three months,” Shkop explained. “If we can do that, I think we can bring in probably 20,000 to 30,000 nurses in the next year. I think it will change the health care environment in this country.”
The timeline for new visa applications for nursing home workers simply won’t get the job done in the current environment, Shkop said, and he’d like to see more of an effort made to allow international workers to fill the worker shortage gap.
He’s not the only one. Moe Freedman, president of Accolade Healthcare, said the largely untapped international worker pool would help bring in a variety of new prospective health care workers.
“I think they need to open up the borders to people who want to come here on work visas, not just from a nursing perspective but from a CNA perspective as well,” Freedman added.
He said they are trying to attract new workers from overseas and work on recruitment in other places but the visa timeframe right now makes it very difficult.
Senior care leaders including the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living earlier this year asked lawmakers to amend the country’s current immigrant visa prioritization to consider prioritizing the entry of foreign-trained nurses and health care workers into the United States, in a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Immigrant Visa Prioritization, last updated in September, tiers visa applications based on priority with health care employment at the bottom of the list.
“There’s too much red tape. They are not addressing the fact that we’re seeing the need for it,” Freedman said.
Recently clarified guidance from the State Department instructs that U.S. embassies and consulates may prioritize immigrant visa cases of certain health care professionals who will work at a facility engaged in pandemic response as emergencies on a case-by-case basis
Despite this, Freedman, like Shkop, doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the federal government moving the needle much more than that on immigration reform for nursing home workers.
Likewise, Mark Parkinson — president and CEO of the American Health Care Association — doesn’t see the visa situation being resolved anytime soon, calling immigration reform both a “home run” and something that “is not going to happen” for the sector.
“The political divide is just too significant,” he said during a panel at the 2021 Fall NIC Conference. “So we’re working on some smaller activities. We’re working with the administration and there are some things that the state department can do to speed up the visa application process.”
Companies featured in this article:
Accolade Healthcare, American Health Care Association, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mozart Healthcare, National Center for Assisted Living
