Trinity Health President and CEO Mike Slubowski Calls for Immediate Support for Health Care Workforce
February 15, 2022The “one-two punch” of Delta and Omicron has crippled our nation's health system. Trinity Health has never experienced a more dire workforce crisis.
Many staff have left the industry with no plans to return. The pipeline to replace them is woefully inadequate, and those who valiantly stayed are challenged with additional burdens because there are fewer staff to do the work.
In December 2021, the health care sector employed 449,500 fewer workers than in February 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Hospitals have lost 95,600 jobs since February 2020, and 420,700 jobs have been lost at nursing and residential care facilities. These shortages cross the entire workforce including nursing, other clinical and non-clinical.
Workforce shortages have implications for patient care including long emergency department wait times and closure of hospital and nursing home beds.
Trinity Health is committed to creating a caring colleague culture by listening to and investing in our workforce. We are focused on the pay and benefits provided to our colleagues, with special attention on those who are the lowest paid. Our Ministry has developed retention and recruitment programs that include financial incentives and flexible benefits. We have also created resiliency programs, expanded job training opportunities and piloted new care models like virtually integrated care. And, we need and want to do more.
Efforts to rebuild our nation's health care workforce must begin immediately but will likely take years to complete. I urge Congress to quickly replenish the Provider Relief Fund to deliver financial help to health systems to invest in workforce retention and recruitment. This support will not only enable health systems to do more for front-line workers today but will also address the critical task of rebuilding our workforce. Together, we can emerge from this pandemic standing strong, capable of providing compassionate, life-saving health care to all who are in need.