HJNO Mar/Apr 2021

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2021 19 providing lifesaving care in their communities. The pandemic demonstrates the importance of maintaining state funding for these provid- ers, who also serve as the largest employers in their local communities. The hospitals in the Acadiana region seem to have been hit harder than the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas. Will you please speak to this? Like all areas of our state, there’s no doubt that the Acadiana region has been hit hard by this pandemic. In November, as the Thanks- giving holiday approached, area hospitals began warning the public about intensive care unit staffing capacity caused by a nurs- ing shortage. They clarified that this workforce challenge could not be solved by merely re- purposing public buildings to house hospital beds. Thankfully, that region’s COVID hos- pital admission levels have not returned to the highest peak we saw this past summer. Some other regions, like Monroe and Shreve- port, have since reached their highest COV- ID hospitalization levels to date. The Louisi- ana Department of Health (LDH) website at https://ldh.la.gov/coronavirus illustrates chang- es in COVID hospital admissions by region. Let’s talk healthcare workforce for a moment. We didn’t know when a pandemic would hit, but we knew the baby boomers were going to age out of the workforce while needing enhanced care. Where, in your opinion, was/is the bottle- neck? Were we proactive enough in encouraging healthcare careers, and what can be done now? Recent hospital capacity challenges dem- onstrate that Louisiana must train more reg- istered nurses. The nationwide demand for these nurses outpaces the supply, and a grow- ing number of unfilled nursing positions could delay patients’ access to care. It’s important to credit the Louisiana Legisla- ture for identifying a meaningful, longer-term solution to this problem. A few years ago, law- makers recognized that existing bottlenecks in nursing school admissions prevent too many qualified students from entering this high- demand profession. While Louisiana nursing schools train or graduate roughly 2,000 new nurses per year, they also turn away nearly 1,400 qualified nursing school applicants per year, because of a nursing faculty shortage. When discussing qualified applicants who were ultimately rejected from nurse educa- tion programs, one Louisiana nursing school dean said, “In the middle of that list there are 20 excellent nurses who are not going to get in, people who would make excellent nurses. They’ve made good grades. You can see their progress on their transcripts. They’ve taken ex- tra classes, and they’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do. We can’t get them in be- cause I don’t have enough [faculty].” Louisiana can build its healthcare workforce with programs that increase nurse faculty so nursing schools can admit and graduate these qualified applicants. This will help to fill va- cancies left by a third of Louisiana’s RNs who plan to retire within the next 10 years. These programs under the Louisiana State Board of Regents also make economic sense. With a national median salary of $73,929, these highly- skilled jobs help to stabilize our state’s econo- my, especially in rural areas. “As rural hospitals in neighboring states continue to close their doors, funding under Louisiana’s Rural Hospital Preservation Act has helped our small rural community hospitals continue providing lifesaving care in their communities. The pandemic demonstrates the importance of maintaining state funding for these providers, who also serve as the largest employers in their local communities.”