JEFFERSON CITY – A new report from the Missouri Hospital Association shows hospital staff turnover rates fell in 2023, although they remain higher than before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report covers data collected from 128 hospitals across Missouri and identifies trends among 33 different hospital positions, or clinical and medical practice positions.
Among the report’s most important findings, the 10 hospital professions with the highest rate of employee vacancies include licensed practical nurses, computed tomography technologists, registered nurses, surgical technicians, radiology technologists, nursing assistants, imaging technologists MRI, sonographers and sonographers. technologists, phlebotomists and medical laboratory technicians.
Professions with the highest employee turnover rate included jobs in environmental services, food service workers and dietary assistants, phlebotomists, nursing assistants, medical laboratory technicians, sterile processing technicians, licensed practical nurses, registered dietitians, pharmacy technicians and occupational therapist assistants.
“COVID-19 actually had a pretty profound effect on Missouri’s workforce,” said Dave Dillon, vice president of public and media relations for the Missouri Health Association. “It created an environment where the care environment was very different. “There was a lot of pressure and a significant amount of rejection during that period.”
That resulted in a lot of burnout among hospital workers, with some employees taking advantage of travel nursing and the opportunities it offered, and going to work for agencies outside the hospital system, Dillon added.
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“We have seen these numbers come back post-COVID to a similar area to where we were before the pandemic, but that is in no way an indication that we are out of the woods,” Dillon said. “We are seeing a reasonably high rate of vacancies and turnover between positions, and we have not yet fully adapted to the old normal.”
Employment projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released in 2023, predicted that the health care and social assistance sector will add about 2.1 million jobs between 2022 and 2032. This represents the most of any sector and It represents 45% of all new jobs, according to the office.
However, the aging workforce in the health professions creates challenges for hospital workforce retention as demand for care (and the workers who provide that care) will only increase in the coming years.
“We have a lot of programs going on that try to encourage people to pursue health careers,” Dillon said. “It starts by exposing people to the types of jobs available in hospitals and healthcare, which represent a wide variety of different jobs. Once we attract them to these professions and train them for them, the key remains to retain them.”
A representative at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Jefferson City is seeing a different trend.
“We’re actually in a period of growth,” said Adam Moss, the hospital’s director of marketing and communications. “We have added, on the provider side, six new family medicine physicians this year alone. We also added several nurse practitioners to our medical group, so we are seeing great growth overall.”
Since SSM St. Mary’s Hospital is a religious hospital, Moss said, some workers are drawn to the hospital because of its religious mission.
“That’s something we like for people to have and it helps them feel included, like they have a purpose,” Moss said. “That is the culture of SSM Health. That helps us differentiate ourselves and I would say that it is unique to us.”
MU Health Care representatives were unable to answer questions by Friday deadline.
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