— An expert is warning lawmakers of a “continuing erosion” of the state’s licensed practical nurse workforce, driven by Wisconsin’s aging population and other factors such as low pay.
Barbara Bowers, founder of the UW-Madison School of Nursing’s Center for Aging Research and Education, yesterday shared results of the latest survey of LPNs during a legislative briefing. Between 2011 and 2021, the number of these nurses in Wisconsin fell from more than 14,000 to around 10,000, she noted.
“That’s a huge drop in the number of LPNs who are licensed, not even those who are actually practicing,” Bowers said in a presentation from the Wisconsin Nurses Association and the Wisconsin Center for Nursing, which conducted the survey.
Along with these nurses being slower to graduate, she also noted retirements are on the rise as the pool of working nurses steadily gets older.
“While there’s a fair number — over 50 percent — who said they’re going to continue working at least 10 years, 44 percent said they’re done within nine years,” she said. “That’s a huge loss … It’s a real early warning sign.”
More than 500 licensed LPNs said they weren’t currently working when surveyed, and were asked what could bring them back into the workforce. Their top three responses were improved pay, more flexible hours and a more positive work environment, Bowers said. She noted the current pay for LPNs is between $18 and $23 per hour.
“The biggest problem in the work environment is short staffing, so again, it’s sort of a self-perpetuating problem,” she said.
Meanwhile, a separate survey of registered nurses found the RN workforce grew from about 83,000 to more than 97,000 between 2012 and 2022. But Susan Zahner, an RN and UW-Madison professor, highlighted a “worrisome” recent dip in the rate of increase.
“This is not when we need to have fewer nurses; this is when we need to have more nurses,” she said yesterday. “So, a little concerned about that.”
Zahner also highlighted survey results showing more RNs, other faculty and organizational leaders are looking to leave their current position within the next five years.
Bowers added the “extreme shortage” of workers in long-term care is concerning, and will be exacerbated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandating minimum staffing levels for these care providers. She said that process is ongoing.
“We’ve had almost two-dozen nursing homes in Wisconsin close in the last two years,” she said. “Most of them are in rural communities, where there’s already a shortage, and most of the providers say the reason they’ve closed is because they can’t find staff to work there.”
Watch the full briefing here:
— The Legislative Audit Bureau found DHS failed during the pandemic to execute appropriate agreements on ventilators it loaned providers and didn’t properly track the equipment.
The LAB found six ventilators — worth a combined $122,300 — were missing as of January and the department didn’t develop a plan for their future use.
But Department of Health Services Secretary Kirsten Johnson — who took over the agency earlier this year after the period LAB reviewed — defended the agency’s handling of the ventilator program. She noted it was created during an emergency response to the pandemic that required quick decisions to help health care providers deliver critical care.
“Auditing a program established in these conditions, but assuming optimal conditions, fails to account for the dynamic nature of the emergency that DHS staff along with other state partners navigated,” Johnson wrote in a response to the audit.
The review looked at supplemental federal funds the state received during the public health emergency and how DHS used them to administer its Provider Payment and Ventilator Stewardship programs. The first gave grants to long-term health and emergency medical service providers between March 2020 and June 2022 to help them with increased costs. The latter purchased and maintained 1,542 ventilators sent to hospitals and other entities.
The LAB looked at 31 grants totaling $3.2 million of the $159.6 million awarded to providers with the first program. It found $518,700 of the $3.2 million paid to 10 grant recipients didn’t include sufficient documentation to support the applications or the amounts they requested.
Joint Audit Committee Co-chairs Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Green Bay, and Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Racine, knocked the Evers administration for what they said was a mismanagement of federal COVID-19 funds.
“The glaring concern in this report is NOT that millions of dollars were spent to purchase property and provide grants in the midst of a health emergency, it is that no documentation or plan is in place to account for the decisions made by the department,” Wittke said. “The audit should be viewed as a tool for improvement; we can’t learn without documentation or plans.”
Johnson wrote in the DHS response to the audit that the agency will take corrective actions that LAB had recommended and report back to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee by Aug. 15. Still, the agency took issue with LAB’s finding that it collected insufficient documentation from providers to prove the need for the payments during the pandemic.
She added in one case, LAB suggested DHS should’ve collected information that wouldn’t have even been available at the time.
Johnson wrote: “DHS will engage with the providers identified to attempt to obtain additional documentation that might be available, not because we believe the costs were not justifiable
based on the documentation we currently have, but instead to satisfy the corrective action plan as laid out.”
Read the report: https://legis.wisconsin.gov/lab/media/3591/23-6full_719285.pdf
<br><b><i>Top headlines from the Health Care Report…</b></i>
— The research director for the new UW Clinical Trials Institute says it will improve the process for getting new therapies to market while making it easier to engage with industry.
<i>For more of the most relevant news on COVID-19, reports on groundbreaking health research in Wisconsin, links to top stories and more, sign up today for the free daily Health Care Report from WisPolitics.com and WisBusiness.com.</i>
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— DATCP has announced $200,000 in grants through the agency’s Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin program.
The program helps businesses in the agriculture and food industries to “more efficiently process, market, and distribute” locally grown products, a release shows. After receiving 24 requests for more than $784,000, DATCP selected 10 applicants for this year’s round of grants.
Recipients include: Park Ridge Organics of Fond du Lac; Together Farms, Mondovi; Sullivan Family Farm, Manitowoc; Rock Ridge Orchard, Edgar; Artisan Grain Collaborative, Madison; BFF Kombucha, Spencer; Ourganic Farms, Watertown; American Hazelnut Company, Gays Mills; Graves Family Orchard, Brownsville; and the Bayfield Regional Food Producers Cooperative in Washburn.
See details on the funded projects: https://www.wispolitics.com/2023/dept-of-agriculture-announces-2023-buy-local-buy-wisconsin-grant-recipients
#TOP STORIES#
# Master Lock to shut down Milwaukee manufacturing plant
# Developer moving ahead with 211 new homes on contentious Delafield site
# New brewery hopes to revive beer making in historic Waukesha building
#TOPICS#
# AGRIBUSINESS
– Planting proceeds in northwestern Wisconsin
http://wisconsinagconnection.com/story-state.php?Id=522&yr=2023
# CONSTRUCTION
– Milwaukee County Mental Health Emergency Center project wins national award
# ECONOMY
– NFL Draft in Green Bay may attract $94 million — and visitors via rail and ship
# EDUCATION
– UWM students rethink Glendale industrial land as new city center: Slideshow
– GOP budget would boost tech school funding by tens of millions less than Evers’
# ENVIRONMENT
– EPA creates $30M grant program to advance Great Lakes projects in underserved communities
# HEALTH CARE
– Audit faults grant, ventilator distribution in Wisconsin during height of COVID-19
– DHS extends new patient ban on Green Bay memory care center
# LABOR
– Collins Aerospace to close Peshtigo facility, lay off 100 employees
– Poor scheduling pushes Appleton Starbucks’ employees to go on strike
# MANUFACTURING
– Luxury wooden boat manufacturer Grand Craft Boats to sell products in the Middle East
# POLITICS
– Quarry reform bill sparks debate over local government control, environmental impact
# RETAIL
– Kohl’s is plotting changes to its store layouts. Here’s what to expect.
# SPORTS
– New rules for state athletic tournaments in Wisconsin seek to resolve fairness concerns
– 2 lawmakers push for $2 million in the state budget to help pay the costs of the Packers hosting the NFL draft
– The NFL Draft in Green Bay: 5 ways whole state of Wisconsin will benefit
# COLUMNS
– Opinion: Legal sports betting has already gone too far
# PRESS RELEASES
<i>See these and other press releases:
https://www.wisbusiness.com/press-releases/ </i>
Electronic Theatre Controls: Tollefson named 2023 Wisconsin ORBIE® finalist
Dept. of Workforce Development: April local unemployment and unemployment data released
