Pennsylvania report details hospital challenges including vacancy rates, agency costs

Hospitals workforce challenges — from rising vacancy rates to increased costs of workers from agencies — are put into perspective in a new report from the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, an industry association. In one finding, it said hourly rates for nursing support staff from staffing firms rose 444% from 2019 to 2021.

The report is based on a survey of Pennsylvania hospitals from Nov. 10 to Dec. 21 and it found that hospitals are facing increased vacancy and turnover rates along with challenges hiring staff. The vacancy turnover rate for registered nurses was 27% in 2021, up from 21% in 2019.

Meanwhile, the vacancy rate for clinical nurse specialists rose to 32% in 2021 compared with 15% in 2019.

Hospitals also continue to face difficulty hiring staff despite offering incentives:

66% identified offering recruitment and retention bonuses and incentives as their top strategy for recruiting and retaining staff.
90% reported that finding qualified candidates is their top barrier to hiring needed staff.
Emergency departments and medical-surgical units were identified as the top areas of clinical staff need.

It also looked at use of staffing agencies and rates paid:

Hourly rates paid to staffing agencies for registered nurses providing direct patient care in medical/surgical and other units have increased by 108% from $59 per hour to $123 per hour in 2021 while the average number of shifts per day worked by temporary staff increased to 11 from five.
Hourly rates paid to staffing agencies for registered nurses providing direct patient care in specialty units have increased by 82% from $66 per hour to $120 per hour while the average number of shifts per day worked by temporary staff increased to nine from four.
Hourly rates paid to staffing agencies for nursing support staff have increased by 444% to $49 per hour from $9 per hour while the average number of shifts per day worked by temporary nursing support staff increased to five from three.

An executive summary of the survey is online.