South Florida hospitals in fierce fight to find workers to treat COVID patients

South Florida hospitals are in full recruiting mode, desperate to keep their staff levels up during the pandemic.

The desperation is not only about beds filling up as COVID patients arrive in record numbers, but also about finding enough experienced workers to attend to the critically ill patients.

Competing with each other and with the state, hospitals are luring nurses from as far away as Alaska with hazard pay, and free lodging and meals. The mission for these medical professionals is vital: relieve burned-out hospital staff, provide needy coronavirus patients with round-the-clock attention, and fill in for workers exposed to the virus who have to quarantine at home.

“We are learning and adapting, but that doesn’t mean our staffing need isn’t huge,” said Maggie Hansen, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive for Memorial Healthcare System.

With all eyes on hospitalizations, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said this week he is not worried about running out of intensive care beds, but rather having enough staff to care for the surge of coronavirus patients.

Records from the Florida Office of Emergency Management show 51 hospitals in Florida have requested additional help of 2,412 nurses. Broward hospitals asked for 274 and Palm Beach County asked for 142, according to ABC Action News in Tampa. About 1,000 temporary nurses have been deployed by the state, and DeSantis has said his team is working with staffing agencies to fulfill the requests.

Rather than relying on the state, some South Florida hospitals are recruiting nurses on their own.

Florida healthcare workers told state leaders on Friday relief is not coming fast enough and understaffing at hospitals is taking a toll.

“We love our jobs and the communities we serve,” Miami ER technician Linda Exantus said during a roundtable with healthcare workers on Friday organized by Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried. “But calling us a hero and staffing three nurses and two technicians in a 30-room ER is cruel.”

Staff levels fluctuate

In April, with elective services prohibited and large revenue losses, many Florida Hospitals were laying off and furloughing nurses. Most have brought their furloughed workers back, but some nurses chose not to return. Others became COVID-infected on the job, burned out — or no longer want to risk their lives.

In Pinellas County, nine ICU nurses at an HCA hospital put in their resignation, Kristina Hernandez, a laboratory medical technologist said during the healthcare roundtable. “They are scared. They are not being taken care of and that puts our patients at risk,” Hernandez said. “These are seasoned nurses, and we are losing their expertise.”

At hospitals in South Florida, hard hit by the virus, staffing levels are becoming increasingly strained, driving up the cost for overtime and replacement workers. And that makes the competition fierce to get additional and experienced workers.

Hospitals have told the state they don’t want temporary field hospitals to handle patient overflow because that would poach their workforce.

Mary Mayhew, Secretary of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which regulates hospitals, said hospitals are asking for flexibility to use spaces within their own facilities to add beds and accommodate future demand.

Mayhew said when her agency recently discussed building field hospitals to relieve strained South Florida health systems, hospital leaders pushed back. “What hospitals say is ‘I will be competing for staff with those facilities.’”

Entering recruiting mode

To meet the need for extra workers, the hospitals now are competing against each other and the state for supplemental workers.

Some are spending as much as 50% more than average hourly wages to recruit temporary medical staff with intensive care or emergency experience to treat the sickest of patients. These workers will earn what’s known in the industry as crisis pay. Other incentives including transportation to and from the hospital, housing and meals.

Some of the health systems have their own staffing firms, others use national recruiters to draw from the pool of workers who helped at hospitals during New York’s surge. After a one-day orientation and a crash course in procedures within the health system, the temps are outfitted with personal protective equipment and sent into the hospitals.

Memorial Healthcare System welcomed its first batch of temporary nurses last week. Since late June, the health system has been pushed deep into surge mode, eliminating all elective surgeries as its hospitals treat coronavirus patients arriving from North Dade and South Broward.

Hansen, chief nursing executive, said Memorial recognized its exhausted employees needed reinforcement and leveraged its own staffing firm to add nurses with ICU or COVID-care experience.

“We decided we would pay competitive rates to tap resources across the country because we don’t want to take any away from other hospitals in South Florida,” Hansen said.

Memorial dangled incentives to contract nurses: higher hourly compensation, housing in a nearby hotel, and transportation to and from the hospital. The health system also used testimonials from previous contract nurses and guarantees of proper protective gear.

“Many of these nurses have been on the front line in hospitals that didn’t have the resources we have,” Hansen said.

So far, Memorial, which has more than 5,000 nurses on staff, has recruited 300 to Florida from states like Alaska and New York. The first 200 have arrived for their 13-week contract. Another 100 will arrive next week. They will work mostly in the COVID unit, where patients who have severe cases of the virus require a one-on-one or two-on-one level of care at all hours of the day.

“Our front line is grateful to have this extra help,” Hansen said.

Crystal Stickle of the Florida Hospital Association said Florida hospitals have more knowledge than in March and April and are using every resource to bring in reinforcement — from direct hiring to using staffing companies to relying on out-of-state volunteer professionals. Some even are asking for help with filling staffing needs through their local county emergency operations centers.

Baptist Health South Florida, which owns Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Bethesda Hospital East and West in Palm Beach County, has added more than 500 nurses to its staff of 5,870 since the surge began — including nurses graduating from its training program and those recruited through staffing companies that supply healthcare workers from out of state.

Healthcare staffing companies say they can’t keep up with the demand, because they, too, have nurses, respiratory therapists and nursing assistants who are infected.

“Healthcare is delivered in a lot of settings and they are all competing for personnel,” said David Savitsky, CEO of ATC Healthcare Services, a national staffing firm. “Hospitals are intense places. There is a lot of stress associated with working in a hospital. Those jobs are the hardest to fill.”

Savitsky said some travel nurses refuse to work on a COVID floor, while others are enticed by the crisis pay of an additional $25 an hour or more. “We are doing what we can to fill as many openings as we can,” Savitsky said. “They are worth every dollar they are being paid.”

William Tolia, who operates BrightStar Care, a healthcare staffing company in Plantation, said his company supplies nurses short term, filling in for staff that has to quarantine for 14 days after testing positive or being exposed. “The demand for temporary staffing has exploded,” he said. “We are shorthanded ourselves.”

At Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami-Dade County, leadership has turned to the state for staffing help. The state provided 125 seasoned nurses to the public hospital.

“We are scheduled to orient up to 50 respiratory therapists, 100 nursing assistants and up to an additional 125 nurses,” said Tania Leets, spokeswoman for Jackson. “We are grateful that the State of Florida is paying for these additional resources as we expand our health system capacity and reduce the burden on our staff members.”

Exantus, the Miami ER technician, said hospital employees welcome help but may feel envious of temporary workers who are receiving top pay, prime shifts and stipends.

“It’s not just workload, it’s the way hospitals treat their staff,” she said. “Some of us who are exposed [to the virus] get pushback when we need time off. We have to fight for overtime. Everybody is frustrated.”

If you have a health-related story idea or tip, Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com, 954-304-5908, Twitter and Instagram @cindykgoodman

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