Is the travel nurse pay boom really over?

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As the growth of travel nursing — fueled by demand during the pandemic and a nationwide shortage of nurses — begins to show signs of fading, some experts believe the overall outlook for travel nurse salaries will remain strong despite uncertainty in the health care job market.

Last week, HCA Healthcare executives said during an analyst call that they expect “contract labor” to decrease in the near future, and that the company’s costs for temporary workers fell by 22% from April to June. Wall Street Journal He reported.

During the height of the epidemic, travel nurses reportedly earned up to $10,000 a week. WSJ He described a distorted market for nursing salaries as demand for workers related to the pandemic collided with existing staff shortages.

Despite staff shortages and higher wages for nurses in contract and permanent positions, some industry leaders are anticipating wage and contract cuts for travel nurses, the article said.

But not all experts believe the negative view. Patricia Pittman, Ph.D., of the School of Public Health at George Washington University’s Milken Institute. MedPage Today Even during the email epidemic, the total number of travel nurses was not at an all-time high.

“The hype from hospital executives about the cost of the travel industry may be overblown,” Pittman said. MedPage Today. “They are not always the best sources about what is actually happening on the ground, because they are interested in making some stories.”

She does see some trends toward the middle market for travel nurses, though. For one, she noted, some hospitals are taking steps not to hire more contract nurses. For example, some hospitals are trying to retain permanent staff by offering additional pay raises and bonuses, or are setting up internal “floating nurse pools” to serve as in-house travel nurses.

Pittman thinks any suggestion that growth is over may be a reflection of cyclical labor needs. Currently, hospital groups may have less demand for travel nurses, allowing them to temporarily lower their costs for those contracts. Pittman cautioned that such changes are typically based on the normal travel nursing cycle.

In fact, a closer look at the world of travel nursing reveals a relatively stable situation. A registered nurse who has negotiated several patient travel contracts at hospitals in the Midwest, who asked not to be named, said she has seen no evidence that those contracts are shrinking.

She told him MedPage Today She’s not sure anyone can predict exactly what will happen with travel nursing. For example, her hospital once announced that they would terminate travel nursing contracts in 6 months, but that was 2 years ago and the number of contract nurses has not changed much.

“I don’t believe hospital systems that say they can’t afford these travelers, but they continue to do so and have no meaningful plans to hire more permanent staff or do anything to encourage permanent staff to stay.” she said MedPage Today. “So it doesn’t make sense to me. It looks like someone is running the numbers and they can afford more travelers.”

This experience was reflected in a recent study of registered nurses MedPage Today This shows that the demand for nurses is still increasing among the low workforce. That survey of more than 9,000 nurses found that 24% of respondents believed their units had enough nurses with adequate skill levels. This result is down from 39 percent in the 2018 version of the survey.

Based on Pittman’s expectation that current trends are cyclical, the short-term outlook for travel nursing fees is a decline of as much as 15 percent, Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilot said. WSJ. He also pointed out that the current weekly salary of travel nurses is over $3,000. The epidemic has led to a sharp decline in pay, Tanculut said. WSJ It may not drop to pre-pandemic rates.

Several stakeholders, including nursing organizations and staffing agencies, declined to comment for this article.

Pittman said there are huge economic risks to travel nursing and the country as a whole.

“If a recession is coming — and nurses and their families think a recession is coming — we’re going to see some nurses go back to work,” Pittman said. “This is the traditional countercyclical nature of the nursing workforce.”

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    Michael Depew-Wilson is a reporter on MedPage Today’s Organization and Investigations team. It covers psychiatry, long-term covid and infectious diseases, among other relevant US clinical news. follow



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