Nursing Shortage to Hit New York, Country

Back in March, the factoring blog posted about the nursing shortage in New York City.  Now, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is warning Americans that in conjunction with the health care crisis, an imminent nursing shortage is upon us as a nation.  There cannot be health care reform without more nurses in the health care system.  Luckily for New Yorkers and Americans, Senator Gillibrand is taking on this issue.

The main reason for the sudden scarcity is due to many nurses getting ready for retirement.  In Brooklyn and Queens, 19% of the nurses are over the age of 55 and will be ready to retire over the next ten years.  New York City alone will need about 60,000 more nurses over the next ten years if it wants to sustain a quality health care system.

Another problem is the nursing education system.  Qualified applicants are being denied entry into nursing programs across the country due to limited classroom space and insufficient number of faculty.  The College of Staten Island in Staten Island only accepted 125 out of 400 applicants.  While the rejection pool includes unqualified students, a good number of worthy prospects still remains.

Senator Gillibrand has plans to circumvent this potential disaster.  To increase nursing faculty, she plans to offer 100% loan repayment to nurses who complete a nursing program and choose to come back and teach at nursing institutions.  In addition, she plans to give out grants to nursing education programs so that they can accept more students.  Lastly, she wants to incentivise nurses to insert themselves into poorer areas of New York.

President Obama has already helped Senator Gillibrand’s third task; part of Obama’s stimulus package included a $300 million grant to the National Health Service Corps, an organization that recruits nurses.

Click here to read the entire article: New York’s Nursing Shortage (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand)

Obama Talks Health Care on ABC

As President Obama advocates for a health care system overhaul, many Americans are questioning how it will function as well as how the country will pay for it.  The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog profiled Obama’s televised town hall meeting on ABC last week to try and explain his plans in more detail.

The President assured Americans that the government will not force them to switch doctors or health insurance plans.  Also, private companies will still be able to choose different plans for their employees on their own.  However, critics argue that given a cheaper government option, most businesses will jump ship from private insurance companies. 

Health insurance companies feel threatened by the proposal, stating that a government program would put them out of business.  Obama responded to these concerns by admitting he wasn’t sure a government plan would be included in his final proposal.

Additionally, Obama explained that the funding for his health care system would either come from lowering the amount that wealthy Americans can deduct on their taxes or from taxing health benefits. Regardless of how he accomplishes this, many wonder if Obama will be the first president to solve the problem of uninsured Americans.

Little is known right now about how President Obama’s healthcare reform will affect healthcare vendors like medical billing and coding companies and/or temporary nurse staffing agencies. They will have to wait patiently to see how the President’s changes will affect them.

To read the entire Wall Street Journal Blog article, click here: Separating Fact from Fiction on Health-Care Reform

To view a clip of the town hall meeting, click here: President Obama Defends Right to Choose Best Care

For a full transcript of the meeting, click here: Questions for the President: Prescription for America

For Profit Hospitals Doing Better in Bad Economy

Some interesting statistics were announced at last week at the annual South Florida Summit. Caroline Rossi Steinber, a trends specialist with the American Hospital Association (AHA), shared the following information with attendees:

90% of surveyed hospitals have made cutbacks as a result of the tough economic times, with the biggest cuts in administrative expenses.

43% of surveyed hospitals had a negative net return for the first quarter, which was 17% higher than the same time last year

65% of hospitals reported that they witnessesed an increase in the number of physicians seeking employment

In addition, according to Darren P. Lehrich, Deutsche Bank’s managing director of healthcare providers research, for profit hospitals’ stocks have increased 70% in the past three months. Moreoever, the profit margins for publicly traded hospitals during the quarter were the highest they’ve been in a number of years.

A big concern for hospitals across the U.S. is how the concept of public health insurance will be interpreted and enforced in the future.

The AHA’s studies show that most hospitals are relying on current government payers like Medicare and Medicaid, whose combined brings in 56% of the revenue, while private insurance accounts for 43% of revenue.

Steinberg noted that providers depend heavily on private insurance providers to pay the bills because Medicaid only reimburses 90% of their costs and private insurance generally reimburses 130%. If the public health insurance is specified as a health insurance option for the uninsured, it would help hospitals immensely by reducing the uncompensated care. On the other hand, if public health insurance is used as a “cheap public plan open to everybody an reimbursed providers at low rates,” it would be devastating to the hospital industry.

Click here to read more details: Hospitals cutting back.

Faculty Shortage Hurt Nursing Programs

Would you take a job that paid you 50% less than your current one? Nurses around the U.S. are facing this question daily when it comes to choosing between working as a registered nurse or working as a nurse intructor. More often than not, RNs are choosing to stay in the field instead of teaching new nurses, which is making the nationwide nurse shortage an even bigger problem. Fewer teachers in the classroom means more nursing programs have to turn away prospective nursing students.

An article in the Marshall News Messenger quoted associate dean for undergraduate nursing programs at the University of Texas at Tyler, “UT Tyler’s four-year bachelor’s degree program has about 610 students…The school gets about 300-375 applicants and admits about 130 to 140 students.”

The article also included director of the college’s associate degree nursing program, Dayna Davidson, and her thoughts: “About 200 people usually apply for Kilgore College’s 60 positions.”

Still not everyone is hurting. Some private universitities, such as East Texas Baptist University, have empty seats in their nursing programs. Leslie Borcherding, interim dean of the nursing department in teh Frank S. Groner Endowed Memorial School of Professional Studies, thinks the school’s higher tuition combined with the poor economy are jeeping the nursing program’s enrollment down.

Click here to read the entire article: Faculty shortages hurt college nursing programs.

PRN Funding Celebrates Medical Transcription Week

Following suit with the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), PRN Funding wants to extend a very heartfelt, Happy Medical Transcription Week!

Per the organization’s web site, the AHDI is encouraging medical transcriptionists and editors to embrace the theme of the 2009 National Medical Transcription week, Knowledge is  and celebrate “by doing something important for yourself.”

Click here to see what else you can do to celebrate National Medical Transcription Week.

Miami Has Highest Healthcare Costs in Country

A Medicare report that was released on Monday announced that private healthcare costs in Miami are the highest in the nation. An average family living in Miami paid a whopping $20,282 in healthcare costs in 2008, which is almost 21% higher than the national average.

The Milliman Medical Cost Index report held southern Florida in the spotlight specifically because President Barack Obama’s vow to trim $2 trillion in healthcare costs will most likely start there.

The report studies 14 cities, showing that healthcare costs were cheapest in Phoenix, AZ ($14,857 per family), and New York came in close to Miami, with average healthcare costs of $19,684 per family.

The report also explained that the national average is $16,771.

Click here to read the entire article as it appeared in the Miami Herald, Average Family Pays $20,000 in Health Costs.

Ohio Hospitals Feel Financial Pinch

A couple of days ago, PRN Funding blogged about the effects of the economy on America’s hospitals. Not surprisingly, the economy is affecting the health care systems and hospitals local to home–Right here, in Cleveland, OH, the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, MetroHealth Medical Center and the Sisters of Charity Health System are all facing tough financial decisions.

According to an article on Cleveland.com, the Cleveland Clinic “cut spending on construction, travel and consultants. It also instituted a hiring and pay freeze late last year,” while University Hospitals continues to monitor the economy and keep the possibility of future layoffs on the table.

Meanwhile, MetroHealth Medical Center and Sisters of Charity Health System are annoucning job cuts. The Ohio Hospital Association reported that 1/3 of Ohio’s hospitals plan layoffs in the next six months.

Some blame the region’s unemployment, which was 9.3% in February, as the biggest challenge to the state’s hospitals. “Fewer people are opting for elective procedures as household budgets tighten. And rising unemployment means fewer people who are insured and able to pay their health bills,” the article said.

Click here to read the entire article: Cleveland Hospitals Feel Financial Pinch.

Slow Payments Push Public Hospitals Towards Bankruptcy

Health care restructuring experts predict that the economic downfall “will force more municipalities to make the tough political call of shedding financially draining public hospitals, possibly through a bankruptcy filing,” according to a Wall Street Journal article that was published last week.

A big part of the problem is state Medicaid programs. The majority of public hospitals’ patients are insured by Medicaid, which has a strong track record of paying slowly. Adding to the slow-paying problem, the current economic downturn has been making it even more difficult for payments to be delivered in a timely manner.

So municipalities are left with a difficult decision: Continue covering their hospitals’ losses in addition to dealing with their other debts, or  shut down the hospital so that residents lose out on health care and the hospital employees lose their jobs.

Click here to read the entire article: Downturn May Send Public Hospitals into Bankruptcy.

Healthcare Sector Job Growth Slows

The economy continues to hinder the job market, and the hospital and healthcare sectors are being hit significantly by the slow economy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shared some shocking numbers this week:

The hospital sector added 7,300 new jobs in April 2007, and that number increased one year later to 11,300 new jobs. However, in April 2009, the number of new hires dwindled to  a mere 600 new jobs.

The healthcare sectors as w hole, which includes physicians’ offices, residential mental health homes, and blood and organ banks, only added 17,000 new jobs in April 2009, which is way down in comparison to the 30,000 average new hires for the month.

According to an article on HealthLeadersMedia.com, which reported these numbers, “If hospital payroll increases continue at this pace, fewer than 25,000 new jobs will be created in 2009, as compared with 137,100 new hospital jobs in 2008; 105,700 new jobs in 2007.”

It is important to note that even though job growth is slow in the hospital and healthcare sectors, they are still outperforming the overall economy.

Click here to read the entire article: Hospital Job Growth Slows.

AHDI/MTIA EHR Task Force Recruiting for Focus Group

The AHDI/MTIA EHR Task Force has a very real goal to “develop and release an EHR Readiness Toolkit, a resource guide for our sector in preparing for healthcare’s migration to an electronic health information infrastructure,” according to a recent Vitals eNewsletter.

In order to meet this goal, the Task Force wants to form two focus groups of transcriptionists with EMR/EHR integration experience to provide insight, recommendations and feedback to help develop the toolkit.

The Task Force is seeking approximately 8-10 MTs or transcription managers/supervisors who have experience as employees with facility migration to an EMR/EHR are needed for one focus group, and approximately 8-10 MTSOs or independent contractors who have been part of a client’s migration to an EMR/EHR for the second focus group.

Some of the duty’s involved with the focus groups include: complete a comprehensive questionnaire, partake in 1-2 meetings, and review the toolkit prior to its release.

If you are interested and able to participate, contact Tiffany Wagner (twagner@ahdionline.org or 209-341-2461).

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