As Vermont’s hospitals and long-term care facilities contend with staffing shortages, the state plans to open 30 overflow beds in the next two weeks, with 50 more to follow.
Monica White, commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living, announced the plans on Tuesday. The department regulates more than 3,000 licensed beds at long-term care facilities statewide.
Three participating facilities — Burlington Health and Rehab Center, Mountain View Center in Rutland and St. Albans Healthcare and Rehabilitation — are slated to get up to $1.4 million to staff these 80 beds with temporary staff in the next three months, according to White. Patients who need these beds are too sick to go home, but are well enough to get their needs met at long-term care facilities.
The announcement comes as Vermont’s hospitals contend with a surge of patients even as health care workforce shortages limit the number of staffed beds. Nursing homes and long-term care facilities have also struggled to retain staff throughout the pandemic. Hospitals and other facilities have increasingly filled vacancies with contractors. But over time, the cost of hiring these temporary staff or “travelers” becomes too high, pushing facilities to cut the number of beds they can afford to staff.
The state based the number of additional beds on a survey that indicated 74 hospitalized patients could be released to long-term care beds, Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said on Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, 40 patients awaiting long-term care beds were hospitalized at University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, the largest hospital in the state, spokesperson Annie Mackin said.
Even as inpatient beds continue to fill up, hospitals have faced emergency department bottlenecks from psychiatric patients who have nowhere to go. A similar effort to alleviate that pressure last month brought back roughly 21 inpatient psychiatric beds that closed during the pandemic at the Brattleboro Retreat, Smith said. But a recent vaccination mandate at the Windham County facility prompted staff to resign, Smith said, and the additional beds closed as a result.
Retreat representatives were not available to comment on the matter on Tuesday afternoon.
