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Healthcare employment was more resilient than expected in January as companies picked up hiring even as COVID-19 hospitalizations reached a record high. Healthcare companies added an estimated 18,000 jobs in the first month of 2022, up from 14,300 in December, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued Friday. The industry's strong showing contributed to 467,000 new jobs recorded across the economy, which was far more than economists projected. (Bannow, 2/4)

UW Health recently had 3,600 nursing shifts to fill over a six-week period. The integrated health system, like so many across country, has turned to staffing agencies to fill workforce gaps. But that created friction between its in-house staff and travel nurses, who are often being paid at least twice as much. On Jan. 16, UW Health implemented a new program for its around 3,400 nurses to ease some of that tension, offering a $100 hourly bonus for nurses who add a 12-hour shift to their normal weekly schedule. The Madison-based system filled 92% of its open shifts within of a week of the program's announcement. (Kacik, 2/4)

Sophia Rois Geffen was working in public health when she decided to train as a nurse so she could connect more closely with people. With graduation from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing about six months away, she and other fellow Hopkins nursing students realized most patients won’t see their faces, masked against the persistent coronavirus. It’s one of the many ways the landscape has changed and challenged nurses in the past two years. But it’s not deterring Geffen and her classmates from running headlong into a pandemic that pushed many experienced professionals to the exits and created a massive shortage of nurses nationwide. “We all came in pretty starry-eyed,” she said. “Now, we understand it’s a challenging time just to be in the profession.” (Cohn, 2/7)

Michiganders working in elementary school classrooms, at grocery store checkout lines, driving city buses and serving in any number of other vital jobs amid the ongoing pandemic may be in line for a payday. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will propose $500 million in one-time "hero pay" benefits intended for a yet-undefined group of Michigan workers and $50 million for similar payments to law enforcement officers, firefighters, first responders and correctional officers. That is in addition to $1.65 billion for teacher and school staff retention, first reported Sunday by the Free Press, she will propose when she presents her 2023 budget recommendations this week to state lawmakers along with extra billions to be spent in the current financial year. (Boucher, 2/7)

Travel nurses make more on average than most nurses employed full-time at hospitals, as travel nurse agencies charge high premiums to fill staffing holes. Many nurses are leaving full-time positions for more lucrative travel jobs, opening even more positions for hospitals to fill. With every new opening, travel agencies are able to hike up their rates. However, hospitals don’t blame travel nurses on their increased supplemental staffing expenses, Love said. “For the nurses that enter the workforce and go to be traveling nurses, we’re certainly not being critical of them in any way,” he said. “We understand. They have to look at their own individual situation and make their best choice.” (Wolf, 2/7)

In much of the country, the number of COVID cases is falling. The Omicron variant may result in less severe illness, but inside many of the country's hospitals, the work is more demanding than ever. That's largely because - according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - nearly 400,000 health care workers have left since the start of the pandemic. Last month, hospitals in 18 states reported critical staff shortages. (Alfonsi, 2/6)

University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, is besieged with Covid patients packing its intensive-care unit, where rooms have been improvised from plastic sheeting and staff have fallen victim to the disease. The U.S. Army is reinforcing its defenses. Captain Jamie Dowd, a nurse who has treated ghastly trauma in Syria and Iraq, was sent to the hospital on a 30-day mission with 24 other troops to help fight the worst wave of Covid-19 cases since the deadly spring of 2020. Plucked from Fort Polk in Louisiana, Dowd last week peered out from the shadows of a room in the Newark progressive-care unit. (Griffin, 2/4)

KHN: Bounties And Bonuses Leave Small Hospitals Behind In Staffing Wars 

A recent lawsuit filed by one Wisconsin health system that temporarily prevented seven workers from starting new jobs at a different health network raised eyebrows, including those of Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association. “To me, that signifies the desperation that hospital leaders are facing in trying to staff their hospitals,” said Slabach. His concern is for the smaller facilities that lack the resources to compete. (Sable-Smith, 2/7)

Baltimore County health department employees are being harassed regularly as they try to perform their duties, according to the county’s top health official, who on Friday urged state lawmakers to pass legislation that would criminalize threats against public health employees. “We’re being threatened, we’re being harassed and we’re being intimidated,” Baltimore County’s public health officer Dr. Gregory Branch told county representatives during a House delegation meeting Friday. The legislation — sponsored by Del. Karen Lewis Young of Frederick County and several Democratic House and Senate lawmakers from Baltimore, Frederick, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties — would make it a misdemeanor to threaten public health employees and hospital staff members with the intent to intimidate or interfere with their ability to work. (Deville, 2/4)

Marian Weber says she wanted to make Ketchikan, Alaska, her forever home. With its widespread greenery and rainy days, and waterfront crowded by houses, it was a long-awaited dream. And staying for good seemed like a real possibility. Weber, 47, was a travel nurse contracted to work at the city-owned Ketchikan Hospital, run by PeaceHealth, a not-for-profit health care system. She says she arrived in April 2021, and the hospital renewed her contract in August before promptly terminating it within the same month. (Lee, 2/6)