Local health care groups cope with worker shortages

Wanted: Workers in search of meaningful work to provide hands-on care to frail seniors in their homes, in assisted living facilities and in nursing homes.

The Iroquois Healthcare Association is running ads across Upstate New York -- including television, radio and billboards -- aimed at recruiting workers with the "caring gene" into entry-level health-care jobs.

New York, like the rest of the nation, is facing a shortage of health care workers, including the certified nursing assistants, home health aides and personal care aides who provide the bulk of daily long term care.

These are difficult jobs, said Gary Fitzgerald, the association's president and CEO. But they're also good jobs, he said.

"The entry level jobs we are talking about are very hard; it's impossible to support a family on (the initial pay)," he said. "But once you get in the field, the pay does go up. ... (Working in fast food or retail) is less stressful. It's also less rewarding quite frankly, to just hand out hamburgers."

More than half of Iroquois' members run health systems that also offer some form of long-term care, including the Mohawk Valley Health System in Utica and Rome Memorial Hospital. But Iroquois has also been chosen by the state as a workforce investment organization. That means it runs worker trainings across the state that are available for free to long-term care facilities and their employees.

The worker shortage comes because fewer people are choosing health care careers and because the existing workforce is aging and retiring, those in the field said. The demand is also growing as the population ages, and state and federal policies stress care outside hospitals, which means more nursing home and home health care for rehabilitation, too.

Nursing assistants and aides are among the jobs for which demand is growing fastest nationally with the number of jobs expected to rise by 46.7 percent for home health aides and 37.4 percent for personal care aides between 2016 and 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The relatively low wages -- in place in part because homes and agencies rely on payments by Medicare and Medicaid -- don't help lure in workers. Other challenges listed by those in the field include: heavy regulation, voluminous paperwork (particularly in home care), patients with increasingly complex medical, long drives in bad weather (for home care) and the need to work holidays, weekends and night shifts.

Despite the downsides, these jobs can be a great career, said Mike McCoy, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Health System Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.

"I tell our orientees, if you do this job for more than five months, it's what you were born to do," he said. It's a good career because you get to touch a life. You get to go home, maybe very tired at the end of your second shift and look yourself in the mirror and say, 'I've done something good today.' It's rewarding in that capacity."

And employers are working to try to make jobs more attractive with educational opportunities to move up the health-care career ladder, bonus pay for certain shifts or caring for sicker patients, day care, good benefits, creating a nice atmosphere or even in the case of one home health experiment, providing vehicles to workers.

For now, though, the worker shortages do have an impact.

"In some cases, there is an access issue," said Al Cardillo, president and CEO of the Home Care Association of New York State. "Where an individual would want the service ... the right kind and amount of support might not be available for such a person."

Even if a home-health agency can hire a worker, the agency has to have enough backup to provide care if that worker gets sick and takes time off, he said.

All the turnover also costs money, making it the biggest source of cost increases, according to member surveys, said Roger Noyes, director of communications for the home care association. Costs include money spent on ads and other recruitment and retention tools, lost productivity, the cost of training new employees and the cost of overtime for remaining employees after someone leaves, he said.

The turnover also takes a toll on remaining workers who like to pick up extra shifts for the overtime pay -- up to a point, McCoy said.

"They're working many, many extra shifts and they're getting tired and they're getting burned out a bit," he said. "It's affecting the way we can provide our services. We're learning to do more with less."

Contact reporter Amy Neff Roth at 315-792-5166 or follow her on Twitter (@OD_Roth).

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