I am seeing more and more reports of severe vacancies in the medical field – lots lately of no coverage in the pediatrics section at hospitals.
For some reason the copy/paste failed to do a decent job on the following article so best to go to the URL to read it more easily.
I just got word that a close family member was diagnosed with Covid.
I remind all to get their pH levels to the alkaline side 7.0 so that the virus and bacterial bugs die if they enter your body. All those Big Pharma meds are not the solution to disease – and many of them bring forth other illnesses. Use Colloidal silver rather than the big Pharma anti biotics.
Jackie Juntti
idzrus@earthlink.net
The nationwide shortage of nurses and other trained medical professionals has been well documented. You’ve likely experienced it firsthand. It’s getting harder and harder to schedule appointments with family doctors and other healthcare providers, even for the insured. It’s increasingly impossible to reach a real, live human by phone. Burnout in the profession is rampant, and the pandemic made the crisis a whole lot worse. Like so many things, it feels as though the fragile national healthcare system is crumbling around us — and military medical facilities aren’t immune to the problem, which should surprise exactly no one, particularly in a neck of the woods with strong ties to the armed services. What might surprise you?
A recent report from the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee suggests that solving the problem in military hospitals and medical facilities — at least in part — could be remarkably straightforward. That’s a big deal, even if it makes it hard to understand how no one thought of the no-brainer fix it until now — especially when you consider a key local takeaway from the report: The Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord has been one of the hardest hit military medical facilities in the country.
It’s the U.S. Army’s second-largest medical treatment center, responsible for providing care for thousands of active duty and retired service members and their families from throughout the region. As of Jan. 2023, there were more than 1500 vacant civilian medical positions at Madigan, the report noted. The figure represented 38% of Madigan’s civilian medical positions. The total number of vacancies and the percentage of open civilian positions at Madigan were more than any military medical facility included in the Pandemic Response Accountability report, which included 24 of the Department of Defense’s 45 hospitals as well as their associated clinics.
At the Bremerton Naval Hospital, 22% of civilian medical positions were vacant, the report found — a total of 68 unfilled positions. BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION Last week, members of Washington’s congressional delegation, led by Sen. Patty Murray, filed a bipartisan legislative effort designed to quickly eliminate a slew of maddening barriers that have left some U.S. Department of Defense medical facilities struggling to meet current demands According to the prominent Democrat, that’s where some of the trouble lies. Fixing the problem could help fill thousands of vacant civilian positions at military hospitals across the U.S., Murray’s office told The News Tribune — at a time when the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the demand for nurses to grow exponentially in the coming years. If passed, the bill — which is expected to have broad support on both sides of the aisle — would give military hospitals and medical facilities the freedom to waive outdated experience requirements, said Naomi Savin, Murray’s deputy communications director.
Particularly in recent years, a set of arcane Office of Personnel Management rules— dictating a rigid, at times nonsensical military medical pay scale — have contributed to an exodus of nurses and other healthcare professionals, Savin said, including many with years under their belt and advanced degrees on their resume. With backing from U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, the former mayor of Tacoma, and U.S. Rep. Ted Budd of North Carolina, the bill is known as the Retain Educated Workers and Registered Nurses Developing (REWARD) Experience Act. Murray is expected to publicly unveil the effort early this week, her office told The News Tribune.
Officials from Madigan and the federal Defense Health Agency declined to comment on the pending legislation or the problem it aims to solve. Still, in Congress, you’ve got Democrats and you have Republicans. Now, it would seem, all we need is for common sense to prevail. “Our new bipartisan legislation would … incentivize nurses to stay in the military health care system, where their skills are so important,” Murray said in a statement provided to The News Tribune Nov. 28. “I’m proud to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get that done,” the statement added. IMPACT ON JBLM AND BEYOND In a nutshell, here’s the big problem:
Say you’re a civilian licensed practical nurse working at a military medical facility — you have been for a while, providing patients with basic care and working your way up the professional ladder. Now, say you earn an advanced degree in your spare time, giving you the credentials you need to work as a full-fledged registered nurse, setting you up for what should be a promotion. Under current federal regulations, if you wanted to work as an RN at a military medical facility — like the one where you’ve been employed — you would likely be required to start at a position with lower pay than your current salary.
So what happens? Trained civilian nurses and other medical professionals leave military hospitals — and they don’t look back. Locally, it’s one reason why Madigan has had so many vacant civilian medical positions, according to Strickland, who grew up in Tacoma with a father who served in the Army. In practical terms, Strickland said the inability to hire and retain qualified medical personnel at military hospitals results in less access to care for service members and their families and worse patient outcomes — all assertions supported by the findings of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee’s recent report.
It also means longer, harder hours for the nurses and other critical medical providers who are on staff, contributing to burnout, Strickland told The News Tribune last week. The recently introduced bipartisan bill won’t solve the whole problem, she acknowledged, given the breadth and scope of the national nursing shortage and its many contributing factors. But the change to hiring and pay scale regulations that the legislation spells out would make a “big” difference in a community that depends on JBLM, Strickland said.
“What’s happening nationally with the nursing shortage, it’s also happening at JBLM,” Strickland said. “It’s a pretty simple, straightforward fix … addressing an acute shortage that we have.” “In a place like Washington, DC, where we work on a myriad of issues … this can be a very divided place,” Strickland added. “When it comes to supporting the people who are serving our country, working on national security and keeping us safe, we should all be able to agree.” Let’s hope.