Workforce hurdles such as personnel shortages were the top headache for community hospital CEOs in 2022, outweighing the longtime go-to of financial issues for a second consecutive year in the American College of Healthcare Executives' latest annual survey.
The group’s poll, released Monday, included responses from 281 member CEOs and sought to rank issues of “immediate concern” to hospital leaders. Prior to last year’s poll, “financial challenges” had ranked first for 16 consecutive years.
“Hospitals need to take both long- and short-term measures to address critical workforce issues so they can continue to provide safe, high-quality care now and in the future,” Deborah J. Bowen, president and CEO of ACHE, said in a release accompanying the survey results.
Within the umbrella of “workforce challenges,” 90% of all responding CEOs pointed to shortages of registered nurses, 83% shortages of technicians, 80% burnout among non-physician staff and 70% a shortage of therapists.
Related to financial challenges, 89% of the survey’s respondents cited increasing costs for staff, supplies and other needs. Two-thirds said they were concerned with reducing operating costs, 63% Medicaid reimbursement, 58% managed care and other commercial insurance payments and 52% cuts to non-reimbursement government funding.
Following workforce and financial issues for hospital leaders were hurdles related to behavioral health and addiction. Here the respondents most often pointed to a lack of appropriate facilities or programs in their community (78%), a lack of funding for addressing behavioral health or addiction issues (77%), insufficient reimbursement for behavioral health or addiction services (70%) and the high volume of opioid addiction and related conditions (51%).
ACHE’s annual survey was sent to 1,321 member CEOs of nonfederal, short-term, non-specialty hospitals, of whom 21% responded. The poll had the CEOs rank 11 issues in order of how pressing they were and asked them to list specific areas of concern for each.
Workforce challenges was a new option for ACHE and come after the more specific category, “personnel shortages,” rose from CEO’s third-highest concern in 2018 to second in 2019 and first in 2021.
“Longer-term solutions include strengthening the workforce pipeline through creative partnerships, such as those with colleges to grow the number of nurses and technicians,” Bowen said. “More immediate solutions include supporting and developing all staff, building staff resilience, organizing services to reflect the realities of the labor market and exploring alternative models of care.”
Personnel issues have weighed heavily on hospitals through most of the pandemic, forcing many organizations to limit capacity, raise wage spending and rely on pricey contract labor.
Though still an issue, recent earnings commentary, analyst reports and government jobs numbers all suggest that short-staffed facilities are seeing gradual relief heading into 2023.