Initiative highlights efforts to recruit, retain health care workers in NH

HealthForce NH is a new information hub to attract providers to state long-term

Monadnock Family Services, one of New Hampshire’s community mental health providers, has 25 open staff positions, according to its website. But CEO Phil Wyzik says that number should be higher. The nonprofit has stopped listing some jobs online.

“We decided to stop searching because (applicants) weren’t coming,” Wyzik said.

As a result of inadequate staffing levels, he said a lot of work simply isn’t getting done, and the people who are doing the work are more stressed than ever before.

“We’re fulfilling our mission,” Wyzik said, “but it is hard to squeeze more out of people.”

Monadnock Family Services is hardly an outlier when it comes to facing a health care staffing crisis.

The shortage is an epidemic nationwide, stretching across multiple sectors, according to the American Hospital Association. In New Hampshire, with critically low staffing levels, the story is no different, industry leaders say.

Throughout the state, private sector employment has grown by about 1% since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In the health care field, however, there are 3,500 fewer employees than pre-pandemic, while demand has grown by 79%, according to the state’s Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau. 

The reasons for this trend are diverse: the state’s high cost of living, low availability of affordable housing, limited child care options, lack of mass transportation and general burnout.

The shortage of health care workers is impacting nearly every aspect of the sector, from hospital clean-up jobs to specialized medical providers.

To address this, various state agencies and health leaders have put in efforts to recruit and retain health care workers in the Granite State. But while innovation was happening in pockets of New Hampshire, there was no central leadership to work in concert on workforce development.

A new initiative, HealthForce NH, aims to fix that, by acting as an information hub for people to easily access attempts going on throughout the state.

“We have different state agencies that have a piece of the pie,” said Kim Firth, program director for Endowment for Health, and part of HealthForce NH’s leadership team, “but no one agency … has the authority and accountability to make the changes that are needed.”

To help, Firth said, the Endowment for Health created the Giving Care Plan, which spells out areas for improvement, and in 2022, launched HealthForce NH, with a mission of attracting providers to New Hampshire long-term by enhancing their quality of life.

This is done through its website, which houses data, projects, grants and initiatives to provide resources — such as financial aid for nursing students or paid health care internships for high school students — for current and potential workers.

“We don’t have good data all in one place to answer the question (of) where are the shortages, so we can’t target the solutions either by geography or by discipline to know if we need to be investing in nurses in the North Country or oral health professionals in the Monadnock Region,” Firth said. “That was the catalyst behind the creation for HealthForce NH, pulling the data and trying to put everything in one place so we can begin to answer those questions.”

Dr. Gina O’Brien, interim chief medical officer and pediatrician at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, doesn’t think change will come soon enough to meet all the hospital’s staffing needs, which currently span from sanitary workers to nurses.

“We have a much higher percentage of job openings — double the amount of people actually looking for a job. People can be very picky about what jobs they are choosing and what the pay and benefits are,” she said. “We have to stay competitive for compensation rates for employees and staff, but we also have to be cognizant to be financially sustainable long into the future to provide services to the community.”

Dr. Cherie Holmes, designated institutional official for graduate medical education at Cheshire Medical, said the rural nature of the region poses a hurdle in inviting physicians.

Additionally, the rise of ambulatory care centers, such as Urgent Care and Minute Clinics, in New Hampshire has lured medical professionals because they can make more money doing shift work, without the patient follow-up and disease management necessary at area hospitals.

“They can just go to work, do a job and go home,” Holmes said. “It provides some people a better work-life balance.”

Though Firth acknowledged there are many issues to tackle statewide, she is optimistic that change can be made to improve the health care workforce system overtime.

“Small things make a big impact,” Firth said, “and if we begin to chip away at those, in addition to getting a better handle on data, so we are making informed decisions, we can change the way we think of workforce development and address these root causes to support health care across the state.”

This article is being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.