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Hospitals adapt to changing workforce needs Facilities employ retraining, reassignment as some procedures return
“Those employees are eligible to collect unemployment but maintain their benefits. While the Covid-19 pandemic has brought Others saw reduced hours and pay reducunprecedented pressure on New Hamp- tions.” At Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, shire’s healthcare workforce, hospitals have found a variety of ways to adjust their staff- spokesperson Lauren Collins-Cline said, due to a drop in patient volume and revenue, the ing ENGINEERING, to try to minimize layoffs and meet in- FINANCE, HITECTURE, HOSPITALS, BANKING, PERSONAL ENERGY hospital in creased demand in emergency departAND JUMPS, IN BRIEF, FLOTSAM, LAW, OPINIONS, THE LATEST, ABOUT TOWN late April placed 423 employees on a 60-day furlough and either reduced ments. NSTRUCTION, EDUCATION, HEALTHCARE, TOURISM, NEWS, CHARITABLE GIVING, MORE ONLINE With elective surgeriesLAST andWORD other revenue- hours or pay for an additional 914 employnother TOURISM choice, CALENDAR, generating procedures shut down, hundreds ees, but they too are retooling. “Over the last two months, we have redeof healthcare workers have been furloughed ployed or retrained people for different roles, and taken pay cuts, but when possible, hospitals are finding ways to reassign and retrain like having nurses who normally work in endoscopy man the phones in our employee on the fly. Across SolutionHealth’s two locations, health call center and asking others in cliniManchester-based Elliot Health System and cal roles to help with patient screening at our Nashua-based Southern NH Health System, front entrances,” she said. “Healthcare posistaff have also been retrained and rede- tions are often license-specific so retraining ployed, said Kelly Corbi, chief operating of- would also mean relicensing — something that would be impractical during these cirficer. “This includes physicians, advanced prac- cumstances.” tice providers, nurses, patient care assistants Bringing employees back and more who have valuable skills that could Under Gov. Chris Sununu’s revised stay-atbe applied to areas where we have need. home orders, hospitals are ready to resume An example is a pediatrician who was resome of the revenue-generating activideployed to the emergency department,” ties curtailed in March, giving hospitals the Corbi said. “green light” to resume certain procedures, The economic impact of Covid-19 has been said Collins-Cline. severe across the board but especially for “As our patient volume builds, we are bringhospitals, said Corbi. That has led to caning employees back for the roles needed to celation of nonessential surgeries and other support that patient care. It will be slow at procedures as well as to set up additional first, but we expect to gradually increase in beds in case they’re needed for Covid-19 the coming weeks,” Collins-Cline said. treatment and to stock up on personal proSamantha O’Neill, vice president of human tective equipment supplies. resources at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, “These revenue losses and added expenssaid the facility has not had to furlough or lay es did force us to take measures to stem our off any staff, but many are working reduced losses. In mid-April, we placed roughly 650 hours. employees on furlough status,” said Corbi. NASHUA REGION LAKES REGION BY JUDI CURRIE
“We are working very hard to redeploy them to other areas in our facility and that of our sister facilities at Frisbie Memorial Hospital (in Rochester) and Parkland Medical Center (in Derry) to ensure they are receiving their full amount of hours,” she said. O’Neill said existing staff has been crosstrained to ensure that they can maintain their hours. For instance, many of the nurses who work in the operating room, outpatient clinics and other departments have experience working in the intensive care unit or other inpatient care units and are getting refresher classes to work alongside the nurses on those units. Sarah Currier, vice president of workforce strategy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon, said that, from the very beginning of the pandemic, the organization has prioritized finding ways to cross-train and upskill employees. “First, we have created a program called Staff-Match to make sure that employees with skills and availability can be reassigned to different areas of our facility that may need those skills and have openings whenever possible,” said Currier. “Next, we have redeployed employees with specific skill sets, like being trained in how to don and doff personal protective equipment, from their regular jobs to have them teach their colleagues and share that knowledge.” She added that the Staff-Match program allows D-H to redeploy staff to other areas that are in need, due to additional patient census or staff absenteeism due to child care. “At this time, we have had limited numbers called off because of the flexibility this program has provided,” Currier said. “We have
also taken this time to train up our staff in critical skills in order to care for potential Covid-19 patients. We are now working on our recovery plan which we know will positively impact staffing needs.”
Hiring continues In April, SolutionHealth put a hiring freeze in place for all nonessential positions. However, Corbi said, it continues to hire essential and strategic roles, particularly respiratory therapists, licensed nursing assistants and environmental services staff. O’Neill said Portsmouth Regional is still hiring in some areas, but the main focus is to ensure that current staff have the ability to work the hours they were hired for, and the same is true for CMC, where Collins-Cline said the hospital would first bring an employee back from reduced hours or furlough before having a new hire start for a particular role. “We are still hiring for certain, specific positions directly related to patient care, although start dates will vary widely. We’re hiring in the operating room, as well as for RNs, LNAs and various tech positions,” Collins-Cline said. “We are mostly holding off on hiring for positions that are not directly related to patient care but we still have about 100 openings.” Dartmouth-Hitchcock is still hiring, said Currier, with a priority placed on filling roles that will help save money by reducing reliance on travelers and overtime or will help facilitate time-sensitive, urgent elective surgeries, procedures and ambulatory visits. This article is being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, collaborativenh.org.
Recovery providers worry about meeting needs BY EMILY DUGGAN
In a May 13 teleconference with Congresswoman Annie Kuster, New Hampshire recovery providers outlined their concerns about meeting the growing need for substance abuse and mental health treatment as the state deals with the pandemic. The court battle against the Affordable Care Act, set to be heard in October, could threaten the health insurance of up to 200,000 New Hampshire residents, Kuster told a panel of the state’s healthcare leaders, as she introduced recent congressional efforts to aid those that need healthcare assistance. Kuster focused on the HEROES Act, a federal coronavirus relief package that earmarks $3 billion to support treatment for mental health and substance use disorders in states, especially as the pandemic takes a toll on residents’ mental health and sobriety. The bill was approved by the U.S. House on May 15 and now heads to the Senate.
“Medicaid is the nation’s largest provider of behavioral health services,” Kuster said. “This administration budget singles out Medicaid expansion for budget cuts, and often, when I think of the response to the opioid crisis here in New Hampshire, I can’t begin to imagine where we would be without Medicaid expansion.”
‘Not enough beds’ The call was attended by providers from hospitals and recovery centers around the state. Many of them expressed concerns about New Hampshire residents being unable to receive treatment that they may need right now. The experts also hinted at admission rates rising because of stress caused by the pandemic and accompanying surge in unemployment. National statistics show that opioid-related deaths increase 3.5% with every 1% rise in the unemployment rate, said Kim Bock, executive director of the New Hampshire Coalition
of Recovery Residences. New Hampshire’s unemployment rate has surged during the pandemic, from 2.6% in March to roughly 20%. She expects that if the trends stay true to the statistics, that the state will “not have enough beds” in recovery residences. At the same time, Bock said there has been a drop in the number of referrals and new people coming into recovery programs, even when most professionals agree the need is high. “There was some sort of flow interruption in treatment,” she said. “People are afraid to go into recovery, to go into treatment right now, afraid to go near any kind of emergency room. They’re afraid of contracting Covid.” Patrick Ho, a psychiatrist at DartmouthHitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, said that with many people putting off treatment, mental health and substance use disorders can reach a crisis point. “We are seeing that there are so many more needs that have become apparent because of Covid-19, for our patients that rely
on so many services that we can provide, and some of which are very difficult to find in New Hampshire,” Ho said. “But when those services become even more difficult to access, then we see a lot of crises that could have potentially been prevented.” With demand for substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment expected to rise, recovery professionals need to prepare for “the other side and what it looks like,” said Shanna Large, director of substance use disorders at Concord-based Riverbend Community Mental Health. “We want to keep moving forward and having treatment as an option for everyone, because we are very concerned that the backside of this is not only going to show mental health, but substance use,” Large said. “We are going to see a lot, and I’m going to be honest, it’s a little terrifying.” This article is being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.
