Expected staffing shortages could hit rural hospitals hard
BELLE PLAINE, Kan. (AP) — Anticipated staffing shortages amid surging coronavirus cases could hit rural hospitals especially hard because smaller communities have more limited options for finding providers to cover for sick workers, medical providers say.
“We are doing what we can to make sure our staff are staying healthy and safe and able to be available to treat the community, but we also have heard that with post-holiday, this could be a challenge,” said Cindy Samuelson, senior vice president for the Kansas Hospital Association. “There is lots of potential for community spread."
About 44% of the state's hospitals on Monday were anticipating staffing shortages this week with an expected rise in COVID-19 cases following the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the association's COVID-19 dashboard.
“I know that in some of our communities just keeping the providers healthy is something that is an intense focus," Samuelson said. "We have rural communities where as that number gets higher and more and more of their providers get impacted, that takes them out of service and so this challenge of finding providers to cover is increasing.”
Kansas ranks 13th in the nation with 1,210 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of data collected by the John Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Five rural Kansas counties — Rush, Republic, Ellsworth, Rawlins and Kearny — rank in the top 25 counties in the nation with the most new cases per capita in the past 14 days.
If medical providers in rural areas get COVID-19 it “really puts small rural hospitals at risk" because options in small communities can be challenging and limited, Samuelson said.
Ben Kimball, a physician assistant at Graham...