Wrangell Medical Center this week welcomed eight temporary out-of-state health care workers assigned to the hospital under a state-financed program to bring as many as 473 professionals to help relieve staffing pressures across Alaska.
The state is spending $87 million in federal money to bring in the workers, allocating them to 14 hospitals and care centers around the state, as many of the facilities are at or near capacity amid a surge in COVID-19 patients the past month.
Some school districts also are included in the program for nurses.
The contract covers 90 days.
Wrangell had five additional nurses and three certified nursing assistants in the building as of Monday, said Carly Allen, hospital administrator. The state contract allocates 10 more medical professionals for the community, though Allen said she does not know when, how many, or if the additional personnel will show up. “Hopefully,” she said.
“This thing is moving very, very fast,” Allen said last week, just days after the state signed a contract with Atlanta-based DLH Solutions. The contract calls for 10 registered nurses, three nursing assistants, a physician, two radiology technicians, a lab manager and lab tech for Wrangell.
Unlike the larger hospitals in Anchorage and Fairbanks, Wrangell is not stressed with COVID-19 patients amid the thousands of new cases reported in the urban centers over the past few weeks. Wrangell’s issue is a long-term staffing shortage, Allen said. The temporary workers will provide a big help, taking pressure off existing staff, she said.
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, which operates the hospital, has about 120 employees in Wrangell. The total includes its clinics and facilities outside the hospital.
Wrangell’s worst month during the pandemic was August, with 48 infections reported, followed by 14 in September and just one this month as of Monday.
Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, the state’s largest hospital, is in the contract for 161 temporary health care workers. The Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage is on the list for 60 personnel, followed by Alaska Regional Medical Center in Anchorage at 43.
The other Southeast hospitals covered by the contract are the SEARHC medical center in Sitka, at 27 workers, and Bartlett Regional Medical Center in Juneau, with an allocation for up to 20 temporary workers.
State officials said the first group of workers filled immediate needs at Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough hospitals with the highest number of intensive-care unit beds. As of Monday, all but one of the adult ICU beds in Anchorage were filled, with 17 COVID-19 patients on ventilators, the state reported.
The temporary workers also will be assigned to other facilities in Anchorage and in Fairbanks, Kodiak, Valdez, Homer and Utqiagvik, and schools in Sitka, Unalaska, Dillingham, Kotzebue, Nome, Skagway, Petersburg and the Kenai Peninsula.
Under the contract, DLH is providing transportation, housing and other services for the workers.
“This contract was never intended to fill all the vacancies … it’s only intended to meet the immediate needs that the hospitals are facing,” Heidi Hedberg, director of the state’s Division of Public Health, told the Anchorage Daily News last week. “They’re all starting to flow in, they’re all starting to be matched,” Hedberg said.
The $87 million, 90-day contract works out to almost $62,000 per month per temporary employee. The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services did not respond to a request last week for comment on the price tag.
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