98% hospitals struggle with nurse staffing crisis, soaring costs — survey

WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES — Ninety-eight percent of hospital chief financial officers claim that nurse staffing is a significant challenge for their health systems, according to a recent report by Nursa.

The findings paint a grim picture, with 86% of health systems having lost 10% or more of their nursing staff in 2023 alone. 

This comes amid efforts to retain staff, with 77% of CFOs indicating they increased starting wages by at least 20% over the past two years.

Additionally, in 2023, 86% of hospitals and health systems saw 10 or more of their nursing staff quit. 

Further, 75% of CFOs and 69% of all hospital executives say nursing costs put significant pressure on their bottom line or are the top driver of margin pressures in the past two to three years.

“The perceived staffing shortage existed long before the pandemic, but the recent public health emergency added a significant amount of stress to an already weary nursing workforce,” said Curtis Anderson, Nursa’s CEO and Founder.

“The survey findings highlight that health executives understand the complex layers leading to the crisis — nurse dissatisfaction, wages, large administrative workloads, etc. — but are employing reactive strategies that still don’t cover all gaps in frontline care staffing.”

The report also revealed that contract nurse volume more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, while 93% of health leaders do not believe nurses employed by a health system are more valuable than independent contractors. 

With an estimated shortage of 200,000 to 450,000 nurses in the United States, staffing challenges remain a top concern for health system executives, requiring nimble solutions to address foreseeably consistent staffing problems.