Ingram's October 2022

The long-anticipated shortage of health-care providers is no longer looming: It’s here. From medical centers to med schools, executives are now in crisis mode. Rising to the Challenge

by Dennis Boone

F or years, health-care executives nationwide have been crushing the “repeat” button on the alarm sounding about a provider short age at both the physician and nursing levels. Dive into the data for most of the medical centers within the Kansas City region, and you’ll quickly learn that they aren’t crying wolf. In the 10 years between 2011 and 2021, hospital records show, the volume of patient admissions has surged nearly 25 percent—while their aggregate physician ranks have fallen by more than 10 percent, and the nursing cohort has beenmore than decimated, down more than 17 percent. As a result, the number of patient ad missions per physician is up nearly 40 percent, and the workload for nurses has risen by more than half. It was never a good situation heading into that decade; closing out that run with punishing waves of pandemic-era admissions has only made things worse.

KC Street Car ■ And the rate of satisfaction with work-life integration fell by more than one-third, from 46.1 percent in 2020 to 30.2 percent last year, with a 6.1 percent increase in the number of self-reported cases of depression. Those figures become even more dire, hospitalexecutivessay,whenoneconsiders that the demand for in-patient services will only increase over the next 20 years as the Baby Boomers push into their end That can’t help but levy an emotional toll on those providers, and emerging metrics are beginning to assess that weight. A study published by the Mayo Clinic this past spring found that over roughly that same 10-year period: ■ A 38.6 percent increase in average emotional exhaustion scores among phy sicians. ■ 62.8% of physicians reported at least one manifestation of burnout last year—a huge jump over the first pandem ic year in 2020 when the figure was 38.2 percent.

of-life care needs, as the lingering threat of a resurgent pandemic comes in new waves, and as the bill comes due with a wider population suffering fromepidemic level cases of diabetes and obesity. At North Kansas City Hospital, CEO Steve Reintjes synthesizes the situation in two words: “It’s severe,” says Reintjes, a physician himself. “Nurse and physician labor shortages are impacting the entire health-care industry. Missouri has a staff nurse vacancy rate of 14.5 percent. Re garding physician shortages, recruiting psychiatrists, endocrinologists and rheu matologists is a significant challenge for us. We are not alone in this challenge.” Sam Huenergardt, chief executive at AdventHealth Shawnee Mission, says there is no doubt the region is in the throes of a provider shortage. “Some spe cialties have enough patient demand that it can take a few weeks for new patients to get an appointment, and many of our Primary Care providers have full patient panels,” he said. “The nursing shortage is

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October 2022

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