COVID hospitalizations down but staffing shortage continues

The pandemic woes continue in the hospitals as staffing shortages continue to play a big role in everyday struggles.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) –The pandemic woes continue in the hospitals as staffing shortages continue to play a big role in everyday struggles. Hospitals like York General seeing a 15% vacancy rate for their staff.

“The bed availability in our hospital today, it’s more of a staffing availability and how many we can we can staff. The acuity of the patients that we see are much higher than maybe we had traditionally seen, let’s say pre-covid,” Jim Ulrich, the CEO of York General, said.

COVID hospitalizations are down but now, front line workers are facing new challenges.

From influenza to procedures that have been put off due to the pandemic, things are starting to add up.

“What wears on our staff a little bit now too, is we’re starting to see influenza creep in, in our organization as well. So, it’s like, oh, we just get over COVID, here comes influenza plus two high acuity patients,” Ulrich said.

The staffing shortage has been developing even before the pandemic began but COVID has certainly exacerbated the issue.

On the positive end of staffing, local hospitals didn’t see some of the major losses in staff when it came to the covid-19 vaccine mandate deadline set for February 14th.

CHI Health saw 39 people leave and Bryan Health saw just 13 employees not comply by February 13th.