While the travel nurse boom — fueled by demand during the pandemic and a nationwide nursing shortage — begins to show signs of fading, some experts believe the overall outlook for travel nurse salaries will remain strong, even amid uncertainty in the labor market in health care.
Last week, HCA Healthcare executives said during an analyst call that they expected a decrease in “contract work” in the near future and that the company’s spending on temporary staffing had decreased 22% from April to June. Wall Street Journal reported.
Travel nurses reportedly earned up to $10,000 a week during the height of the pandemic, according to WSJ article, which described a distorted market for nursing salaries as a result of pandemic-related staffing demand colliding with existing staff shortages.
While staff shortages have continued and wages have remained higher for nurses in both contract and permanent positions, some industry leaders expect a decline in wages and contracts for traveling nurses, the article said.
But not all experts believe in the negative outlook. Patricia Pittman PhD, of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said MedPage Today via email that even during the height of the pandemic, the total number of travel nurses was not at an all-time high.
“It’s possible that hospital executives’ outcry about the travel industry’s prices is overblown,” Pittman said. MedPage Today. “They’re not always the best sources for what’s actually happening on the ground because they have a vested interest in building certain stories.”
However, she sees some trends toward a more moderate market for travel nurses. For one, she noted, some hospitals are taking action to avoid hiring more contract nurses. For example, some hospitals are trying to retain permanent staff by offering more pay raises and bonuses, or they are developing in-house “real estate nurse pools” to act as in-house travel nurses.
Pittman also thinks that any suggestion that the boom is over may simply be a reflection of cyclical staffing needs. Hospital groups may have less need for travel nurses at the moment, which allows them to temporarily reduce spending on those contracts. Pittman cautioned that such changes are usually based on the typical travel nursing cycle.
In fact, a closer look inside the world of travel nursing reveals a relatively stable situation. A registered nurse who has completed several patient travel contracts at hospitals in the Midwest and who asked to remain anonymous said she has seen no evidence that those contracts are being reduced.
She said MedPage Today that she is not sure how anyone can accurately predict what will happen with travel nursing. For example, her hospital announced at one point that they would end travel nursing contracts in 6 months, but that was 2 years ago and the number of contract nurses hasn’t changed much.
“I don’t believe these hospital systems that say they can’t afford these travelers, but then they continue to hire them and make no meaningful plans to hire more permanent staff or do anything to promote staff. permanent to stay.” she said MedPage Today. “So it doesn’t make sense to me. It looks like someone ran the numbers and they can actually handle more passengers.”
This experience was reflected in a recent study of registered nurses reported by MedPage Today which showed that there is still an increased need for nurses among the lower staff. This survey, which included more than 9,000 nurses, found that only 24% of respondents believed their units had enough nurses with the right skill level most of the time. This result was down from 39% in a 2018 version of the survey.
Consistent with Pittman’s expectation that current trends are cyclical, the near-term outlook for travel nursing wages appears to fall as much as 15%, said Brian Tanquilut, an analyst at Jefferies. WSJ. He noted that the current weekly salary for travel nurses is just over $3,000. It’s a sharp drop from the highest salary during the pandemic, but Tanquilut said WSJ that it is unlikely to fall to pre-pandemic rates.
Several stakeholders, including nursing organizations and staffing agencies, declined to comment for this article.
Pittman also noted that the biggest economic concerns loom over travel nursing and the country as a whole.
“If a recession is coming — and even if nurses and their families just think a recession is coming — we’re likely to see some nurses go back to work,” Pittman said. “This is the traditional countercyclical nature of the nursing workforce.”
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