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Gov. Kate Brown orders $25 million infusion to staff up hospitals By Jeff Manning | oregonlive.com (TNS) Updated: Dec 07, 2022 04:44 PM A A Providence Medford Medical Center. [Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune] Gov. Kate Brown intends to spend $25 million to bring more nurses and other health care workers into Oregon’s struggling hospitals. Brown issued an emergency declaration Wednesday that will set the plan into motion. The state hopes to hire so-called traveling nurses, who work for temp agencies and travel around the country to take short-term jobs at various hospitals. “Our health care workers — our nurses, doctors, and hospital staff — are being pushed to their limits by this year’s combination of flu, RSV, and COVID-19 hospitalizations,” Brown said. “As they do everything they can to keep Oregonians healthy and safe, we must all do our part to help them. Our health care workers are working around the clock to protect the people most vulnerable to severe respiratory illnesses — including our young children and seniors.” A presentation Pat Allen, outgoing head of the Oregon Health Authority, was set to deliver Wednesday to the Oregon House Health Care Committee described the situation as “extremely concerning.” Hospitals are operating at or near capacity. Some hospitals are putting two patients in intensive care unit rooms designed for one. Emergency departments are reporting the highest-ever rates of “boarding,” the practice of keeping a new patient in the emergency room until a hospital bed is freed up. The latest slug of cash comes after an earlier $14 million assistance package for hospitals announced in September. Officials at the Oregon Nurses Association, one of the main unions representing nurses, welcomed the news of a potential influx of additional nurses. But they were not happy with another facet of the order softening current minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. Hospitals have pleaded for more flexibility on staffing rules as they attempt to weather the current disaster. “We’re happy to take (the state’s) help, especially if the smaller, community hospitals get their share,” said Kevin Mealy, a union spokesperson. The staff shortage that has emerged since the COVID-19 pandemic has led to badly congested hospitals. Even as COVID cases declined, patients were waiting weeks, even months, in their hospital beds for space to open up in nursing homes or assisted living operations. The staff shortage has made it difficult for hospitals to handle normal patient loads. Today, the sharp rise of the respiratory syncytial virus known as RSV, a brisk flu season and the ongoing burden posed by the pandemic have made a bad situation much worse. Allen said clinicians are reporting “unusually high severity among previously hospitalized children.” OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel both declared in November that they were moving to “crisis standards of care.” These standards help hospitals decide which patients get care when resources are severely limited, and allow them to loosen staffing standards so that nurses can care for more patients. Since then, Providence Portland Medical Center and Providence St. Vincent Medical Center announced their pediatric units were adopting the new crisis care standard as well. Hospitals have taken a financial beating. Providence Health & Services in Oregon lost $270 million through the first three quarters of the year. In the same period a year ago, Providence’s revenues exceeded expenses by $73.9 million.