Kansas will give nurses extra pay. But will hospitals with vaccine mandates qualify?
Gov. Laura Kelly and top lawmakers on Friday approved up to $50 million in extra pay for Kansas nurses working in hospitals, many of whom have been driven to exhaustion by the latest wave of severely ill COVID-19 patients.
But Republican legislators may attempt to limit the funds to hospitals that don’t require employees to be vaccinated — a restriction that, if implemented, could keep staff at a growing number of facilities from receiving the additional pay.
Thousands of nurses and other frontline health care workers could receive a bump in their paychecks in the coming months under the plan authorized by the State Finance Council, a body chaired by the governor and comprised of legislative leaders. First, however, an advisory panel will meet to discuss eligibility guidelines for the aid, where GOP legislators are expected to raise the issue of vaccine mandates.
“If you were to get all the emails I get from across the state from nurses who are just absolutely fuming about the fact they’re going to have to take the vaccine or lose their job — if just a fraction of those come to be, I think we’re going to have even bigger problems here soon,” said House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican.
Hospitalizations driven by the delta variant are straining facilities across the country, sending hospital executives scrambling to boost staffing while exacerbating a national shortage of nurses. Companies that supply traveling nurses are charging top dollar, adding to facilities’ financial burden.
The assistance comes after several weeks of urgent warnings from hospitals that they had reached the breaking point in their ability to care for patients. COVID-19 hospitalizations in Kansas soared through July and August to levels last seen in January, during the depths of the winter surge.
The plan provides hospitals up to $50 million in federal pandemic aid to increase pay for nurses. Hospitals would have discretion over how to distribute the additional pay between now and the end of the year but are limited to increases of $13 an hour or $25,000 a year under federal guidelines. Hospitals would serve only as a “pass through” for the dollars, meaning they wouldn’t be able to retain funding for other purposes.
The State Finance Council approved the funding in a unanimous vote after the executive committee of the Strengthening People and Revitalizing Kansas (SPARK) taskforce, an advisory group, endorsed the idea earlier Friday.
“The situation is real. It’s creating a lot of stress on the system,” Jon Rolph, a SPARK member who spearheaded the proposal, told the Finance Council.
Some Republican members raised concerns about hospital mandates. Senate Majority Leader Larry Alley, a Winfield Republican, asked whether nurses aren’t working because of mask mandates inside facilities.
Rolph responded that in his conversations with hospitals the issue hadn’t come up. Indeed, mask wearing among medical personnel while on the job long predates the pandemic.
During the SPARK meeting, Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, signaled that he wants facilities to be eligible for the aid “ if they’re not instituting counterproductive policies and mandates that also make it harder to staff these beds.”
A number of Kansas hospitals have announced vaccine requirements for staff in recent days, including the University of Kansas Health System this week. Ascension Via Christi, a major Wichita health system, will require shots, along with hospitals in Topeka and Lawrence.
Whether SPARK will support limiting the extra pay for nurses to hospitals without mandates is unclear, though Republican lawmakers and their appointees control four of seven seats on its executive committee.
The looming clash over mandates comes as nurses have been receiving incentives from competing hospitals out of state, including large signing bonuses, to jump jobs. Travel nurses are also in extreme demand. Aya Healthcare, a major travel nursing agency, reported requests to fill more than 400 positions in Kansas as of Aug. 30.
Kevin Strecker, chief operating officer of Ascension Via Christi, said Ascension is currently using at least 140 contract nurses. The organization has already turned to retention agreements in an effort to keep staff aboard but has experienced an “exodus” of nurses.
About 850 people die at Ascension’s St. Francis hospital each year, Strecker said. About 1,300 have died this year.
“That has taken a toll on them,” he said of staff.
The daily onslaught of virus patients — the vast majority unvaccinated — has worn down staff, nurses and their advocates say. The sickest patients, those in the ICU, require round-the-clock care that limits how many a nurse can look after, adding to the strain.
“The stress, the emotion … the sadness that it causes on my staff is endless,” Carol Perry, chief nursing officer at Stormont Vail Health in Topeka, told The Star in an interview last month.
COVID-19 patient numbers may have plateaued in the last couple weeks, according to data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, but haven’t begun dropping. In the Kansas City metro, virus admissions are again falling but area hospitals continue to treat far more patients than this spring, according to the Mid-America Regional Council.
The influx has exacted a deadly toll. COVID-19 deaths surged in late July and August, with a summer peak of 18 deaths reported on Aug. 5. The number is well below December levels, when more than 50 were being reported many days.
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Kansas will give nurses extra pay. But will hospitals with vaccine mandates qualify?."
