Home Health & Hospice Week

Despite the sluggish economy, many home care providers continue to have problems finding nurses. In fact, home health agencies and hospices have the highest vacancy rates among providers in Louisiana, notes a new nursing workforce report from the Louisiana Center for Nursing, a division of the Louisiana State Board of Nursing. Vacancy rates for HHAs are more than three times those for hospitals and twice as much as long-term care facilities, the report found. Hospice rates are close behind.

And hospices have the highest RN turnover rate at 45 percent, compared to 36 percent for both long-term care facilities and psych hospitals, 35 percent for HHAs, and 17 percent for hospitals, the study says.

There are many reasons for those figures. First, demand for home care is growing due to the aging of the U.S. population and quicker discharges from hospitals. But Medicare is reducing payment rates, making it harder "to pay the nurses what they need," Donald Lirette, RN and owner of Bayou Home Care, told the Houma Today newspaper.

Increased paperwork requirements also drive away home care job candidates, Lirette said. "You almost have to be better at paperwork than bedside nursing."

Nurses also can be reluctant to go into home care because it's isolating, noted Sonia Fanguy-Clarke, head of Fletcher Technical Community College's nursing program. "You are completely on your own. You have to be able to handle any situation," she said.

New nurses sometimes avoid hospice because "you're taught in nursing school to provide wellness, but in hospice your patients aren't going to get better," Fanguy-Clarke told the newspaper. "That's emotionally taxing for anyone."

Ahead: Expect the nursing shortage to worsen in coming years, experts say. The improving economy will allow older nurses to retire while demand for health care services grows.

Resource: The 35-page nursing workforce demand study is online at http://lcn.lsbn.state.la.us/documents/nursingworkforcedemandreport.pdf.