Kansas may provide extra pay to thousands of nurses exhausted by latest COVID-19 surge

Update: On Friday afternoon, the State Finance Council voted to approve up to $50 million in extra pay for nurses. Full story here.

Thousands of Kansas nurses, driven to exhaustion by a wave of severely ill COVID-19 patients, could receive extra pay this fall under a plan to provide hospitals up to $50 million in federal pandemic aid.

A state task force on Friday recommended premium pay for ICU and inpatient nurses, along with other frontline health care workers, as hospitals struggle to hire adequate staff. The State Finance Council — comprised of top lawmakers and chaired by Gov. Laura Kelly — must approve the plan and is set to meet later this afternoon.

Hospitalizations driven by the delta variant are straining facilities across the country, sending hospital executives scrambling to boost staffing while exacerbating a national shortage of nurses. Companies that supply traveling nurses are charging top dollar, adding to facilities’ financial burden. Registered nurses are the second most in-demand job in the state, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.

The planned assistance comes after several weeks of urgent warnings from hospitals that they had reached the breaking point in their ability to care for patients. COVID-19 hospitalizations in Kansas soared through July and August to levels last seen in January, during the depths of the winter surge.

The plan was outlined during a Friday meeting of the Strengthening People and Revitalizing Kansas — SPARK — taskforce, which vets proposals to spend federal pandemic aid. Jon Rolph, who was appointed to the panel by Kelly, offered the proposal.

“There is a burnout factor where people have been through this once. They’re worried about the energy this will take to go through this a second time,” Rolph said of nurses.

The plan would provide hospitals up to $50 million in federal pandemic relief to increase pay for nurses. Hospitals would have discretion over how to distribute the additional pay between now and the end of the year but are limited to increases of no more than $13 an hour or $25,000 a year under federal guidelines. Hospitals would serve only as a “pass through” for the dollars, meaning they wouldn’t be able to retain funding for other purposes.

Nurses have been receiving incentives from competing hospitals out of state, including large signing bonuses, to jump jobs. Travel nurses are also in extreme demand. Aya Healthcare, a major travel nursing agency, reported requests to fill more than 400 positions in Kansas as of Aug. 30.

COVID-19 patient numbers may have plateaued in the last couple weeks, according to data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, but haven’t begun dropping. In the Kansas City metro, virus admissions are again falling but area hospitals continue to treat far more patients than this spring, according to the Mid-America Regional Council.

The influx has exacted a deadly toll. COVID-19 deaths surged in late July and August, with a summer peak of 18 deaths reported on Aug. 5. The number is well below December levels, when more than 50 were being reported many days.

But hospitals, flooded by a new wave of COVID, have had difficulty transferring patients, leading to tragic outcomes. A McPherson man with a non-COVID condition died last month after waiting for a hospital bed with specialized care.

“We’re just pushing our staff very hard,” said Kevin Strecker, chief operating officer of Ascension Via Christi. He said Ascension is currently using at least 140 contract nurses.

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican and SPARK member, moved to recommend approving the funding, with a major caveat that could affect hospitals with vaccine mandates.

“This motion is also going to contain that facilities would only be eligible for these dollars if they’re not instituting counterproductive policies and mandates that also make it harder to staff these beds,” Masterson said.

On Wednesday, the University of Kansas Health System announced it would require employees to be vaccinated. Secretary of Administration Angela Burns-Wallace, who also sits on SPARK, seconded the motion and the taskforce approved it unanimously.

The taskforce recommendation remains just that, a recommendation.

The daily onslaught of virus patients — the vast majority unvaccinated — has worn down staff, nurses and their advocates say. The sickest patients, those in the ICU, require round-the-clock care that limits how many a nurse can look after, adding to the strain.

“The stress, the emotion … the sadness that it causes on my staff is endless,” Carol Perry, chief nursing officer at Stormont Vail Health in Topeka, told The Star in an interview last month.

The SPARK proposal comes after Missouri Gov. Mike Parson disclosed in August that Missouri would provide $15 million to boost hospital staffing. The smallest hospitals, those with up to 25 beds, can receive up to $50,000. At the high end, hospitals with 401 beds or more are eligible for up to $200,000.

In Kansas, the distribution of funds will be based in part on the number of licensed beds at hospitals and the ratio of employees to patients.