Employment levels in the skilled nursing industry are lagging compared with other parts of the healthcare continuum, noted the authors of a study published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated staff turnover across the healthcare sector, and policymakers and healthcare organizations must take steps to prevent further mass turnover, wrote Karen Shen, PhD; Julia C.P. Eddelbuettel; and Matthew D. Eisenberg, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The study of approximately 18 million healthcare industry employees found that a “persistent increase” in healthcare workforce turnover has occurred since early 2020. 

Several factors, such as burnout, led to healthcare workers leaving their jobs during and after the pandemic, according to the authors.

With the exception of skilled nursing facilities and a few other provider types, “healthcare employment levels had largely returned to baseline values by the end of 2020,” they said. “However, even in the absence of changes in employment levels, the pandemic may be associated with other health care workforce patterns that can be meaningful to patients and health care organizations,” the authors said.

Employment levels have been offset to some degree by hiring of agency staff, which the authors claim may affect resident/patient care by disrupting the continuity of care and “by diminishing the years of experience of the workforce.”

Additionally, the said, the use of agency staff places a strain on the provider, which must devote more resources to recruiting and training workers.

“The increase in healthcare workforce turnover may pose substantial costs for both organizations and patients, as it implies potentially disrupted continuity of care and fewer staff with industry- and firm-specific experience,” the researchers noted. “Increasing evidence has suggested that staff dissatisfaction and staff turnover in healthcare settings can have unfavorable implications for patient care even without staffing shortages.”

Therefore, they concluded that “policy efforts to address healthcare worker burnout and improve healthcare worker hiring pipelines are well warranted.”

Read more about the study in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.