PIKE: Healthcare industry struggles with staffing
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By DAVID CAMPHOUSE
David Camphouse/Pike Press
Jane Armistead, left, and Megan Evans – who represent Illini Community Hospital’s new childcare center – were part of an Illini job fair at John Wood Community College’s Southeast Education Center. Illini has dozens of openings, which it has struggled to fill. Many other healthcare facilities, including Pike County nursing homes, are also dealing with staffing shortages.
The healthcare industry in Pike County is facing a shortage of workers.
According to Blessing Health System’s website, Pittsfield’s Illini Community Hospital – a 25 bed hospital – currently has 36 job openings.
Illini CEO Kathy Hull said that staffing struggles at healthcare facilities are not unique to Pike County. However, Hull said that there are particular challenges facing smaller communities, because rural communities have a smaller pool of workers from which to draw.
“I was recently at a conference in California talking to people from metropolitan areas,” Hull said. “I think everybody is dealing with the same thing. I think it’s all over, but it’s exacerbated in rural areas because of the number of bodies.”
Currently, Hull said that the most pressing staffing issue at Illini is the need to find qualified childcare workers to fill openings at the hospital’s new childcare facility, scheduled to open in early 2022. Hull said, however, there are many more openings across almost all departments at the hospital.
“Our biggest need is childcare, because we are opening up a new service line,” Hull said. “But we have clinical openings and openings in dietary and environmental services. It’s across the board. I don’t know any one department suffering more than another.”
Hull said that some of the capacity issues faced by hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic are, in actuality, staffing issues.
“There have been cases of ICU beds all being full,” Hull said. “But in some cases, a ‘shortage of beds’ is really a shortage of people to care for the people in the beds. It’s an issue of not having the staff to care for people.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into clear view staffing issues in the healthcare industry, Hull said longer term trends have created the workforce shortage.
“It’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, but this has been brewing for a long time,” Hull said.
An aging workforce, Hull said, is creating a growing issue for healthcare facilities – an issue made worse by the disproportionately older populations in rural communities.
“It’s a numbers game,” Hull said. “The numbers of boomers who are retiring are leaving some big holes, and we are absolutely an older population in Pike County.”
Ultimately, the answer to the staffing issues facing the healthcare industry, according to Hull, won’t be solved overnight and will rely on younger generations of workers.
“The long-term solution is to get kids engaged in healthcare,” Hull said. “We try to attend when the schools have career fairs to get kiddos involved. It’s going to take some effort to have young people see healthcare as a real career alternative.”
Hull encouraged parents and students to contact the Blessing-Riemann College of Nursing & Health Sciences or John Wood Community College to learn about nursing and other healthcare courses of study.
In addition, Hull said that there are funding sources available to students who want to go into the healthcare industry in rural communities.
“Because we are a rural area, we’ve got a lot of offerings for educational assistance – both state and federal,” Hull said. “We’ve got some unique opportunities that urban areas don’t have.”
To see current job openings and to apply for openings, Hull encourages job seekers to access the hospitals website.
“They can get right online and do the application and go from there,” Hull said.
Liberty Village Administrator Billye Titus said that longterm care facilities in Pike County are also seeing a shortage of workers.
“It’s been challenging to find qualified healthcare professionals,” Titus said.
Titus attributes much of the staffing shortage to the stress of the healthcare industry.
“A lot of people are leaving healthcare altogether,” Titus said. “They are choosing something else, whether it be factory work, or wherever else that’s hiring that isn’t healthcare. We’ve lost most of them just because they want to try something different.”
Specifically, Titus said many workers have left healthcare due to the stress of working in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think with all the extra things required for the last 18 months or two years, it wore people down,” Titus said. “People were scared of getting sick or scared of getting somebody else sick. There are countless reasons why.”
According to Titus, the most critical need of long-term care facilities is finding and retaining nurses and CNAs.
“I would say clinical staffing is the biggest struggle we have,” Titus said.
Titus encouraged job seekers to apply for Liberty Village openings at the facility’s website or Facebook page. Alternatively, applicants are welcome to apply in person.
