So, something to be aware of... The wage & labor “crisis” that’s currently playing out in food service is being mirrored in some ways in healthcare.

Only the game of chicken in healthcare is way more high-stakes, and it’s way harder to avert the coming cliff. (Thread)

So, most people are aware that there’s been an ongoing shortage of nurses and doctors, even before the pandemic.

What does people don’t know is that there’s a shortage of *most* healthcare professionals, especially careers that require a bachelor’s degree or higher.

There are myriad and complicated reasons for this that could be their own thread. But, it’s a fact.

Now add to this that yearly raises for non-union healthcare workers have tended to run around 2-3%, in years when we we then at all. So, most salary gains are by changing jobs now

Especially as employers have to offer larger signing bonuses, bouncing hospitals every 2-3 years is pretty common to keep your wages rising steadily.

That was already causing friction, as hospitals have to keep offering better salaries to attract new hires & raising starting pay

So, internal folks see newer people coming in with higher salaries (because we talk), and they’re not happy about it.

Even with all this, even before COVID, a lot of hospitals had jobs they had trouble filling, and so they turned to travel services to fill their gaps.

Travel services provide contract workers for hard-to-fill positions. The thing is...travelers are EXPENSIVE...much more costly than a regular full-time employee, even before COVID.

Then COVID hits and starts pushing folks out of healthcare to retirement, disability, & burn-out.

This quickly skyrockets the demand for all kinds of travel workers...and with that...the cost to acquire them.

And healthcare workers, feeling pretty damn disillusioned with the whole enterprise...start seeing the huge wage offers for travel work. And start leaving their jobs.

NOW, in THEORY...what this should do is push up wages for permanent, full-time folks. But that’s not happening...BECAUSE HOSPITAL BUDGETS ARE FUUUUCKED.

Most hospitals run at ~ 3% margin when they’re healthy. But COVID wrecked hospital income streams & many are well in the red.

Also...in a more typical labor market, the high wages and demand would draw people into the field...EXCEPT, many of the healthcare careers at critical levels (nurses, laboratory staff, etc) have high barriers to entry...2-4 year training pipelines. To make it worse...

...because healthcare professional training & education programs are expensive to run and require their own unique accreditations, there are limited numbers of them— so there are physical limits to how many healthcare workers we can produce in a given year.

So, to compare to the service industry crisis...”market forces” are going to tear the healthcare system apart because the labor force has ever right to demand higher wages, but hospitals have no means to pay them.

But hospitals can’t just close. So, they overwork existing staff.

So, from where I stand (which is inside this ugly system), the US healthcare system is charging towards a feedback loop that drives workers out and/or to travel work, overburdening remaining employees w/o ANY concerns for their welfare, until they, too, burn-out and flee.

What NEEDS to happen is a massive federal intervention for both hospitals AND healthcare workers. Healthcare workers are OWED A DEBT by this country for their service during the pandemic.

We need support, compensation, and time to recover. Or we won’t ever recover.

As I’ve suggested before, I think healthcare workers deserve:

-complete, immediate, tax-free student loan forgiveness
-a paid sabbatical/R&R leave measured in MONTHS
-education support to advance their career or retrain out of healthcare
-immediate, lifelong Medicare

As usual, if you find my threads educational or useful, consider tossing a few bucks in my tip jar so I can one day dream of escaping healthcare hell. http://ko-fi.com/maribrighe