Sky-Rocketing Covid-19 Hospitalizations Spur Desperate Search For Travel Nurses

By Allison Prang

As the number of people hospitalized due to the coronavirus rises across the U.S., hospitals are turning to a tactic they used in earlier surges: hiring more traveling nurses.

Demand is so great that hospitals are paying as much as twice the usual hourly pay for nurses, in one case $140 an hour, traveling-nurse agencies and hospital-industry leaders say.

Hospitalizations, which have set new records every day for two weeks, hit a fresh high of 85,836 on Nov. 23, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That is higher than any of the prior surges in the U.S., where hospitalizations—at their highest—were pushing the 60,000 mark.

Mercy, a health system based in St. Louis, has upward of 150 additional nurses on any one day that it has brought in, said Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President Betty Jo Rocchio.

Before the pandemic, the hourly pay for hiring an intensive-care nurse through an agency was around $86 an hour. To be competitive in this environment, Mercy is paying roughly $140 an hour for those nurses, Ms. Rocchio said.

“It comes out of our profit margin…which was slim anyway in health care,” Ms. Rocchio said. “You have to give the help at the front lines.”

Mercy, a health system based in St. Louis, has upward of 150 additional nurses on any one day that it has brought in, said Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President Betty Jo Rocchio.

Before the pandemic, the hourly pay for hiring an intensive-care nurse through an agency was around $86 an hour. To be competitive in this environment, Mercy is paying roughly $140 an hour for those nurses, Ms. Rocchio said.

“It comes out of our profit margin…which was slim anyway in health care,” Ms. Rocchio said. “You have to give the help at the front lines.”

“We are medically taking care of these complex patients better: keeping them out of the ICU, keeping them off the vent. But that has given rise to the current problem, which is just how do we staff our current needs,” said Ohio Hospital Association President and Chief Executive Mike Abrams, who noted rates for traveling nurses have sometimes been as much as double.

In some places, the increase in hourly pay for traveling nurses has been more manageable. Nancy Averwater, vice president of human resources at Memphis, Tenn.-based Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp., said hiring a traveling nurse is about $95 an hour, which is what it was during the summer surge. That is up from the $75 an hour it cost before the pandemic.

“I doubt that it will go down in the next few months,” Ms. Averwater said.

The rates for traveling nurses vary based on how many a hospital needs and how quickly, says Alan Braynin, CEO and president of Aya Healthcare, a traveling-nurse agency based in San Diego. Whether nurses are going to a Covid-19 unit also affects their rate of pay.

“All those factors make a big difference, and the swings can be very significant,” said Mr. Braynin, whose company has filled more than 13,000 positions during the pandemic. He added that pay for nurses can change by half or more depending on the job, acuity and speed.

Jason Gilbert, chief nurse executive at IU Health in Indiana, said the 16-hospital system has 210 travel nurses, up from 70 before the pandemic. He said that on a regional basis, the rate for those additional staff has risen between 40% and 50% of what it was before the pandemic.

While rates are high compared with normal times, that isn’t the only factor nurses are considering when looking at jobs, said Dan Weberg, head of clinical innovation at Trusted Health, one of the staffing agencies for traveling nurses based in San Francisco. They are also considering things like whether an area has a mask mandate to prevent people from getting the virus, Mr. Weberg said.

Some nurses have taken care of coronavirus cases in several hot spots but demand is so great that Covid-19 experience isn’t a requirement, one agency said.

Veronica O’Kane, a traveling nurse from the Canadian province of Ontario working in Green Bay, Wis., is on her third traveling-nurse contract during the pandemic after doing stints in Maryland and Texas. Ms. O’Kane, who wants to take on another contract in January, said the money being offered to traveling nurses is the most she has seen yet.

“I do want to get a house, and I want to save,” Ms. O’Kane said. The work, though, is taking a toll, she said. “I’ve never been so, like, mentally frail.”