High demand for travel nurses at Texas hospitals as state faces nursing shortage

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Two health care recruitment agencies we spoke to said Texas is a hotspot for travel nursing vacancies as hospitals try to fill thousands of vacancies nationwide.

TEXAS, USA – COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing in Texas, and hospitals need more nurses. We spoke to executives at two different healthcare recruitment agencies to get a glimpse of what they are seeing.

“Texas is a hotbed. The demand is real, ”said John Maaske, CEO of Triage Staffing. “We saw that more jobs were created in Texas than in any other state, percent of the increases, but based on the total job volume.”

John Maaske said last month that Texas had more travel nursing jobs advertised than anywhere else in the country.

“We saw 3,200 new jobs have been created in Texas related to COVID demand alone. 3,200 positions. And that was only last month, ”said Maaske. “In August, 1,800 jobs were created and we only have six days a month.”

We also spoke to the CEO of another medical recruitment company called BluePipes, who said the number of travel nurse vacancies in Texas has doubled since January 2021. And Austin has seen an increase even faster than the national average.

“So from January to date in Austin we’ve seen the number of jobs posted on our platform increase by about 150%,” said Kyle Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Blue Pipes.

Other states are also struggling with nursing shortages, so hospitals have to pay more to have nurses work for them. Kyle Schmidt told KVUE that currently the highest paying jobs as a travel nurse in Texas are around $ 120 an hour. But he said some places still only offer the average wage of $ 35 to $ 40 an hour.

“I would say that a lot of the jobs are between $ 55 and $ 80 an hour, which is pretty lucrative for registered nurses,” Schmidt said at the time. “

“We saw a 30 to 50% increase in wages compared to three months ago because the demand for COVID has increased,” explained Maaske.

We reached out to Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White Health, and St. David’s Healthcare to see how they were doing with staffing and if they were offering higher wage incentives.

They sent the KVUE the following joint statement:

“Ascension Seton, Baylor Scott & White Health and St. David’s HealthCare continue to monitor the surge in COVID-19 cases and execute plans to ensure hospitals have the staff and resources they need to care for our community .

Given the recent spike in hospital admissions affecting facilities in Central Texas and across the state – and the nationwide shortage of nurses – all three health systems are hiring multi-resource staff, increasing shifts, paying critical staff bonuses, and moving non-nursing staff to relocate Helping people not in need of care -clinical tasks.

The majority of patients being treated for serious illness from the virus remain unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. To relieve our frontline workers, we encourage all eligible residents to get vaccinated. Vaccinations help prevent health complications and can reduce hospital stays. “

John Maaske, of Triage Staffing, said the need for nurses is expected to grow nationwide by the end of the year.

“We just continue to forecast greater demand,” he said. “The number of jobs we have as a company has increased by around 20% in the last month alone. And we imagine that this could increase by another 15% to 20% in the next 30 days. “

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