Sep. 17—Hospitals around the state are offering pay raises to lure more workers, and keep experienced employees on staff.

The shortage of health care staff was a problem before the pandemic, and the months of pandemic stress have made health care workers' jobs even harder. With low-skilled jobs in many industries around New Hampshire offering $15 an hour or more, hospitals are scrambling to keep up.

Starting Oct. 1, no Catholic Medical Center employee will make less than $15 per hour. Minimum pay at Dartmouth-Hitchcock facilities — including the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Cheshire Medical Center and New London Hospital — will go up to $17 on Oct. 3.

And on Oct. 11, Elliot Hospital in Manchester and Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua will also start paying a minimum of $17 per hour.

"It was important for us to show our staff we care about them, and we are putting our money where our mouths are," said Catholic Medical Center president Alex Walker. "We want to continue to attract the very best talent out there."

Some of the Elliot Hospital and Southern New Hampshire Medical Center staff in line for raises next month have been earning about $12 an hour, said spokeswoman Dawn Fernald.

"This is life-altering for some of our staff," Fernald said.

Hospitals and the health care sector generally have struggled with staffing, dealing with shortages long before the pandemic. But in recent months, employers around the state have struggled to hire and retain workers and have started offering higher pay or sign-on bonuses. Hospitals are scrambling to keep pace with the changing labor market.

The raise for Dartmouth-Hitchcock employees, announced earlier this month, will be the second pay raise in the last year. The minimum wage for D-H staff went up to $14 in December 2020.

The raises are necessary to retain staff in an increasingly-competitive labor market, Dr. Joanne M. Conroy, CEO and president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock said in a statement announcing the raises.

Walker, of Catholic Medical Center, said the hospital will spend $10 million on the pay increases and other hiring and retention initiatives over the next two years, including raising the minimum pay at the hospital to $15 per hour and giving raises to staff now making between $15 and $20 per hour.

"When you have a very experienced workforce, you want to make sure everybody is where they should be, in terms of pay within the market," Walker said.

The difficulty of hiring new staff gets a lot of attention, Walker said, but he said holding onto experienced workers is important, especially among clinical staff.

"You want those experienced folks to help mentor newer clinical staff," Walker said. "That experience really makes a difference."

The pay raises at Elliot Hospital and Southern New Hampshire Medical Center are expected to cost about $13 million, spokeswoman Fernald said.

The state also announced measures this week to combat the health care worker shortage as COVID surges anew. Retired nurses with recently-lapsed licenses can keep working, and the state is granting temporary licensure to students in their last year of nursing school, through at least January 2022.

Gov. Chris Sununu said this week the state may mobilize National Guard troops or other state workers to help with administrative duties at hospitals.

Vaccine requirement

Health care facilities where vaccine requirements have already taken effect report no significant impact on their workforce — counter to some state lawmakers' concerns.

Genesis Health Care, the parent company of nursing homes and assisted living facilities around the country, including about two dozen in New Hampshire, announced a vaccine requirement for its staff in early August — well before the Biden administration announced a national vaccination requirement for nursing home staff.

Nearly all the company's staff nationwide got vaccinated, said Genesis spokeswoman Lori Mayer.

"Thoughtful and supportive dialogue, hundreds of clinician-led and peer discussions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and the looming federal mandate all played important roles in seeing the vast majority of our unvaccinated employees choose to become vaccinated," Mayer said in an emailed statement.

Some employees were "not willing to comply," but Mayer said the nursing homes' staff who did not receive medical or religious exemptions are now fully vaccinated.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health announced a vaccine requirement in early August, and the New Hampshire Hospital Association recommended its members implement vaccine requirements. Since then, the Biden administration has announced all staff at hospitals and long-term care facilities that accept federal funding will be required to be vaccinated.

Catholic Medical Center has been working on a policy to require vaccinations since early August, and Walker said he expected the policy to be released this month.

"If you have a policy that's smart, and thoughtful and takes into account people's concerns," Walker said, "people are going to step up and do the right thing."

He expected some people will leave health care because of the vaccine requirements, but said other hospitals that have already implemented requirements have seen minimal disruption to their workforces.

"I suspect there will be some fallout, people that decide ultimately to leave the profession," Walker said. "On the other hand, you look at the experience of other places around the country."

Walker pointed to Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, one of the first to announce a vaccine requirement for staff. Fewer than 200 refused to be vaccinated, and were terminated — out of a staff numbering over 25,000, according to the Washington Post.

"There were lawsuits, there were protesters," Walker said. But in the end, the vaccination requirement had little impact on the workforce in a highly competitive health care market, Walker said.

jgrove@unionleader.com

Senior reporter Mark Hayward and State House Bureau Chief Kevin Landrigan contributed to this report.