Maine faces staff shortage at hospitals Recruiting of new nurses becoming more difficult

About seven in 10 Maine hospitals report that worker shortages delayed outpatient services or crowded emergency rooms in the last year, the Maine Hospital Association said Tuesday.

MHA officials, speaking at Bangor and Biddeford news conferences, reported that the situation grew worse over the last year. Steven Michaud, Maine Hospital Association president, said three out of four Maine hospitals found it more difficult to recruit registered nurses than the year before.

Michaud, speaking at the news conference held at Husson College in Bangor, outlined a broad range of problems identified in a survey of 34 Maine hospitals:

. Unfilled hospital positions increased 40 percent in the last year to about 500 openings.

. More than three-quarters of the hospitals surveyed said staff shortages affected access to care. In some cases, admissions were delayed and in others patients were transferred to other hospitals.

. Many registered nurses are getting closer to retirement age, with nearly half 45 or older.

Michaud said the shortage of workers is getting worse just as Mainers themselves are getting older and in need of medical care. Among the states, Maine has the 10th highest rate of residents 65 and older, Michaud said.

While Maine may be aging rapidly, its hospitals still don’t face as severe a staffing crunch as some other states. Michaud said Maine has about 9.4 percent of its jobs unfilled, but New Hampshire is at 12 percent and California and Texas at 13 percent.

The staffing crunch grew as the career options available to those typically drawn to nursing changed, the report said. Unlike many nursing jobs, alternative jobs often don’t carry night and weekend requirements, the report said.

“Today health care is one of many career options,” said Helen McKinnon, patient care administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and president-elect of the Organization of Maine Nursing Executives.

EMMC, the state’s second-largest hospital, has struggled with staffing shortages that executives said have at times delayed noncritical care.

The growing national shortages for positions, like pharmacists, have changed the way Maine hospitals recruit, said Tom Girard, human resources director at Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport and president of the Maine Society of Healthcare Human Resources Administrators.

“Today even our smallest hospitals are conducting national searches that take months to complete,” he said.

He said the shortages aren’t limited to nurses. They include laboratory technicians, surgical technicians, radiology technicians and others.

“Just look at the classified ads at newspapers across Maine and you get a sense of how great a need there is,” he said.

Michaud said the MHA continues to gather data to understand the shortage. But the group intends to seek additional nursing scholarship funds, additional enrollment for nursing schools, tuition assistance and repayment programs and to find ways to create more flexible working conditions.

While state funding will be sought to expand nursing education programs, MHA has not projected how much money would be necessary to create enough new positions to make an impact.

MHA is also looking at new recruitment, retention and promotion strategies. It also wants to promote health care as an attractive career.

Kathleen Stuchiner, MHA’s director of clinical and professional services, said the association is trying to find creative ways to address the staffing problem. One is identifying what the role of nurses should be in a changing medical environment and adjusting educational programs accordingly, she said.

University educators “have been working with us to flesh some of these things out,” she said.