Sometimes, connecting the dots is the best way to learn.
The first set of dots cost $87 million in federal pandemic aid money. That’s the price of the contract the state signed with an Atlanta-based for-profit health care staffing firm to provide up to 470 medical professionals to help out at 15 Alaska hospitals and medical clinics, schools too, for 90 days. The travelers helped relieve the strain during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak this fall, when Alaska was in record territory for new cases and hospitalizations.
The Wrangell Medical Center was on the list for traveling staff, along with hospitals in the state’s biggest cities and rural health care hubs overwhelmed with patients and short on staff.
The other recent COVID dollar dots were put down in Juneau, where a nursing home, Wildflower Court, was so short of staff that it closed an entire wing in early October. The nursing home administrator told Juneau public radio station KTOO last week that he needed to hire 11 certified nursing assistants to open up the wing for residents.
But the facility — same as the state and the rest of the nation — was short of the essential workers, known as CNAs, even before the pandemic.
Looking for a long-term solution, the administrator teamed up with Bartlett Memorial Hospital in Juneau to train local residents for the jobs. Wildflower and Bartlett pay the trainees an hourly wage, pay for their class and pay for their licensing. In exchange, the student CNAs commit to come work at the facility after graduation.
The program worked so well at Bartlett that the hospital’s staff development director said she had more applicants than she could handle just 18 hours after she publicized the training offer.
And while the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the need for more CNAs and an effective training program, it also helped make the effort more attractive to applicants and more productive for employers. Emergency regulations adopted by the state reduced some of the requirements for aspiring CNAs, Jennifer Twito, Bartlett’s staff director, told KTOO.
In Wrangell, SEARHC held a CNA training program in January, one of several over the years, as it also works to recruit residents to fill job openings. Same as the Juneau nursing home and hospital, the SEARHC program in Wrangell provided paid training time and employment opportunity upon completion.
But back to those federally funded cash dots. The cost of those traveler health care workers for three months averaged about $60,000 per month per employee under the $87 million contract. In addition to wages, that covers travel, lodging and other expenses, the company’s recruitment and hiring and employer costs, such as insurance and taxes, and profit. Some of those 470 travelers were highly paid doctors, some were nurses and some were CNAs. And state officials said the travelers were expected to work 60 hours a week under the contract.
“We went through a competitive bidding process and the group (company) we selected was not the highest bidder,” an emergency program manager for the state said at an October news media briefing. “Part of that cost … we asked them to mobilize close to 500 people in short order.” Having additional health care personnel in Alaska was invaluable, he said. “That all goes into the equation.”
No matter how you work the equation, it’s still a lot more expensive to bring in traveling health care providers than to train locals. Training local is a lot better for Alaskans who want to work and stay here, and for their communities.
The state should make every effort to direct some of the latest federal pandemic aid that has appeared on Alaska’s doorstep to step up training opportunities for Alaskans in health care jobs, working with the university system and local medical care providers. Nothing against travelers — they can always come back as tourists.
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