The nursing home industry has lost 2,500 jobs in March alone, further deepening the labor crisis for the sector to a level not seen since 2007 – other health care settings, meanwhile, are faring better than they did pre-pandemic.
That’s according to a March report published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and highlighted by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL).
Since the start of the pandemic, the skilled nursing industry has lost 241,000 workers, or 15.2% of its total workforce.
The long-term care industry overall has experienced the worst of the staffing crisis, AHCA/NCAL said; other health care settings like physician’s offices and outpatient care have already reached or surpassed pre-pandemic staffing levels.
When looking at data from February 2020 to March of this year, health care settings have seen wildly different workforce recovery results. Physician offices for example saw a 2.6% job gain, whereas nursing homes saw a 15.2% job loss during the same timeframe.
Outpatient care saw a 1.3% job gain, amounting to 13,400 jobs,and home health experienced a modest 2,000 job gain from pre-pandemic to March.
Long-term care facilities are still experiencing substantial job losses, AHCA/NCAL said in its BLS review. While not as steep a drop as skilled nursing, the assisted living sector lost 6.2% of its workforce from pre-pandemic to March 2022. That’s 28,800 jobs lost, data shows.
“I do think there will be an end to the employment crisis, but it’s going to take a while,” said AHCA President and CEO Mark Parkinson during a fireside chat with Skilled Nursing News. “We’re going to not only have to be great employers on the engagement and satisfaction side, we have to have jobs that can compete with other sectors.”
Operators like Mission Health Communities have had to look out for themselves, getting creative with recruiting and retention efforts in-house while faced with such troubling numbers.
The Florida-based certified nursing assistant (CNA) program will have 400 graduates within a month after its launch in the summer of 2021, and a 92% retention rate.
State-led efforts to bolster the workforce are alive in Minnesota, with another CNA program that surpassed its goal of recruiting 1,000 CNAs to the state.
The Next Generation of Nursing Assistant initiative was infused with $6.7 million to continue the program in Minnesota, with an additional $13.3 million proposed for the 2024-2025 state budget.
“As I look at our members and providers out there that are doing better than others on the employment situation, it’s because they understand the importance of employees and understand employee engagement satisfaction, and they do it robustly,” Parkinson said.
Parkinson mentioned the Ensign Group in his discussion with SNN, particularly their philosophy that residents come second, after employees. Their success is tied to a dogged focus on employee engagement and satisfaction, he said.
Still, people are scared to enter the nursing home workforce, Parkinson added, with 200,000 individuals dying in the care setting over the past couple years of the pandemic.
It’s a profession that is extremely taxing under normal circumstances, he said, but staff are still wearing masks all day, donning personal protective equipment (PPE) and getting tested frequently.
“They can walk across the street, go to a Walmart or to an Amazon, they don’t have to do that. We’re going to have to, when it’s appropriate, start relaxing some of those requirements that make it so unpleasant to work in buildings,” Parkinson said.
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