University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) says its hospitals are running at about a 25% vacancy rate across staff.
“We’ve seen some early retirements due to just exhaustion from the two years of the pandemic and then there are issues at home that young parents have to face so, the workforce challenges in health care have been enormous,” said URMC Executive Vice President Kathy Parrinello, according to WHEC.
URMC reportedly lost 300 employees due to New York’s vaccine mandate. Many local nursing homes have an even higher staff vacancy rate, with about 1,600 nursing home beds not being staffed.
New York State has offered temporary help to nursing homes from National Guard soldiers trained as EMTs, but these soldiers cannot be used in hospitals.
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