HJAR Mar/Apr 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  MAR / APR 2022 13 healthcare to people when they’re finished. That’s our main focus in terms of pipeline — recruiting from obviously everywhere, being competitive with salaries and wages and benefits (big challenge, but we’re doing that), reaching further into high schools to attract people to the field, and then, unfor- tunately, in the short term ... I shouldn’t say, “unfortunately” as that mischaracterizes my intent ... we are using a lot of agency and contract staff. In a way, thank good- ness we have that option. The downside is it’s extremely expensive, it creates a lot of turnover, and they come on a contract and then they tend to go somewhere else who’s offering more money, and that creates some challenges for us. It’s constant orientation, constant training — everything from what our protocols are to where’s the staff lounge or the cafeteria. They don’t know ... they come in, and you’ve got to put them right to work because of these COVID surges we’re having, and it makes it really challenging having that many new people coming and going on a regular basis. Having said all that, again, thank goodness we have that option. The contract nurses that we’ve had, by and large, we’ve had a great experience. They’ve been professional, and they have helped us through a very difficult time in our hospitals and through the state of Arkansas. Most of the ones we have hired have come fromother states, and that’s been a deliberate decision on our part. We don’t just bring people from one part of Arkansas down to Little Rock. We don’t want to cre- ate problems within our own state, so we’ve been really focused on out-of-state contract staff who have really been, in many cases, following COVID waves. And so, they come in, they’re qualified, they know what to do when they get here. We just have to orient them to howwe do things at Baptist Health. Editor Some hospitals are actually offer- ing free tuition for nurses if they sign up to work at that facility after. Is that some- thing that you guys are considering or are offering? Wells We have, for a very long time, offered a tuition assistance program. When they get out of school, they come to work for us, and we will reimburse them for their tuition for a one to two to three-year contract, depend- ing on the situation. So, we have had a pro- gram like that in place for some time. Editor What is in the fallout of the COVID- 19 vaccine mandate at your facility? Have you had to lay folks off? Wells We have not. The deadline for that is coming soon. We had a pretty good response to the vaccine early on. While we were tracking it early, we had gotten up into the low tomid-80s in terms of who we knew was vaccinated at our hospitals, within our health system. We did pretty good prior to the mandate. Since the CMS requirement got put back into place, we went to work immediately to determine if someone was going to want an exemption. The thought was, let’s go ahead and get that started because we don’t want to wait until the last minute and have all these people requesting exemptions. We got on that back in early December and worked throughout the months of December and January, making sure that everyone who needed one or who thought they wanted one, had an opportunity to do that. We’ve gotten through that process, and now it’s a matter of how flexible CMS is going to be in terms of their requirement — as in, “are you still making strong attempts to get every- one vaccinated or not?”There’s been discus- sion of them viewing the hospitals as, “Hey, if they have the right intent, they’re doing all the right things, we’re not going to yank your Medicare reimbursement if you’ve got 10 people just not vaccinated that you’re try- ing to get there.” I think a lot of it has to do with their flexibility, how they’re going to survey and then what the implications will be or what the impact will be if they find that you are not 100%. I think it’s going to be a matter of what are the things you’re doing to try to get to 100%. The last thing we want to do is termi- nate an employee over a vaccine. We don’t want that to happen. We also know that we fall under the CMS regulation, and we are not in a situation, nor are many healthcare systems in a situation, where we could risk our Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement over a few individuals who refuse to get vaccinated. We did not do a mandate early on like some did. We held off and did not do a man- date earlier last year. Editor So, you haven’t had a mandate in place until the CMS one. Wells That’s correct. Editor COVID has brought on and mag- nified behavioral health disorders in the general population. Many facilities across the country are experiencing an increase in violence toward healthcare workers. Has the Baptist team seen an increase? Wells You know, workplace safety is one of our highest priorities, and we certainly don’t have any tolerance for aggressive behavior or violence towards our staff. I don’t have any evidence to suggest that these events have increased at Baptist Health. There have always been instances, even before COVID. One of the challenges in answer- ing this question is that we know that there is a nationwide problemwith underreport- ing. There’s a lot more anxiety, however, with patients, and that then bleeds over into the staff. When hospitals are full and loved ones are ill, family members are uncomfortable and they’re nervous and they’re anxious and they should be. It’s understandable. Some- times that spills over into maybe more aggressive language ... or frustration might be a better way of putting it ... toward the staff. Our staff are doing everything they can to help people. But, when we have no more resources, and people aren’t used to waiting and they don’t want to wait, and,

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