State offering $14k bonus to attract nurses

The Colorado Department of Human Services is offering a $14,000 sign-on bonus to help recruit nurses to the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo amid a staffing shortage at the facility.

CDHS earlier this week announced it is offering the bonus and other benefits such as health and dental insurance and disability coverage, among other benefits available to state employees to help staff Colorado's two psychiatric hospitals, the other of which is in Denver.

Both facilities are experiencing a staffing shortage for nurses. At the Pueblo facility, there are approximately 150 nurses on staff but more than 100 openings for that position, said Pedro Almeida, deputy executive director of administrative solutions for CDHS. The hospital would like to fill all those openings, though Almedia said that was an "aggressive target," to help staff a facility that has been struggling to recruit and retain nurses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Across the nation, there's been a lot of hits to the health care workforce because of the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic and that is one of the key calling factors behind where we are right now," Almeida said. "Our challenges with hiring and staffing went up significantly since the pandemic, and we're basically still dealing with the fallout of that."

The bonus lapses after June 30 and is highlighted next to a salary figure, job description and qualification list on CDHS' job postings for nurses. There isn't a clause tied to the bonus that states applicants who are hired before that date must work a certain amount of time at either facility to receive the bonus, Almeida said. It is paid out in increments over a nine-month period.

CDHS in September also attempted to offer bonuses to entice people to work at its facilities. That offer was between $2,000 and reached up to $7,000, Almeida said.

To curb resignations, which have also impacted the Pueblo facility, and incentivize employees to stay, CDHS has a $5,000 retention bonus for those staffers and offered a similar $1,000 bonus in September.

A separate bonus, paid through CDHS' referral program, allows employees to receive $1,000 if they refer someone to one of the open positions.

"We consider this to be a significant challenge," Almeida said. "We're putting forth a lot of resources to address the challenge that we have here in (Colorado)."

Employees at the Pueblo facility could receive additional compensation if the 5% increase to state employees' salary included in Gov. Jared Polis' budget proposal for the 2023-24 fiscal year is approved.

Almeida said CDHS partners with Colorado nursing programs that are working to graduate students and enter them into the profession. Pueblo Community College is one example of an institution that's expressed a desire to tailor its nursing program in a way that can help the city meet its workforce needs.

A list that shows the number of unfilled job postings in Pueblo in the city's economic dashboard has had "registered nurses" as the top posting for 12 consecutive months. In the latest report, there were 390 job postings in Pueblo for registered nurses, by far the highest of any profession listed.

That number reached a peak of 432 in June 2022, according to a report from July.

A 2021 report from the consulting firm Mercer, which CDHS cited in its announcement, said Colorado is one of five states projected by 2026 to be unable to meet the increased hiring demand for mental health workers, mostly because people are leaving the profession.

That same study said national recruiting efforts "may prove fruitful" for states dealing with that demand and without a surplus of health care workers.

Colorado is projected to fall 54,000 health care workers short of that demand in 2026, whereas states such as Washington and Georgia are protected to have a surplus of 168,227 and 67,503 workers, respectively.

The study also said states that are projected to have that surplus in 2026 will likely have it because demand for those employees "is not growing as rapidly" as it is in other states and a "steady stream of lower-wage labor" is entering the job market in states with the projected surplus.

Although a COVID-19 impact study from the American Nurses Foundation published in March 2022 does not specifically mention mental health nurses, it does report that 60% of acute-care nurses in the United States at the time of publishing felt "burnt out" and 75% of respondents reported feeling "stressed, frustrated and exhausted."

The study also showed that of the nurses surveyed, 52% reported that they want to leave the profession or were considering doing so because of "insufficient staffing" and "work was negatively affecting their health and wellbeing." Nearly 90% of respondents reported that their organization was experiencing a staffing shortage.

Chieftain reporter Josue Perez can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @josuepwrites.