By Mackenna Moralez, Assistant Editor

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities nationwide are preparing for beds to be filled once again as the omicron variant spreads. The variant has reached 30 states and Washington, D.C., and is continuing to spread.

As with other sectors of the economy, healthcare is suffering from an ongoing labor shortage.Vaccine mandates, long hours, unsafe work conditions, burnout and the ongoing pandemic all have contributed to employment challenges. Some Minnesota hospitals have taken out a full-page ad in local newspapers urging people to still take the pandemic seriously, according to KMSP.

“Our emergency departments are overfilled, and we have patients in every bed in our hospitals,” according to the letter. “This pandemic has strained our operations and demoralized many people on our teams. Care in our hospitals is safe, but our ability to provide it is threatened.”

CEOs from North Memorial CentraCare, Allina, Mayo Clinic, Hennepin Healthcare, Essentia, Fairview Health Service, Children’s Minnesota and HealthPartners signed the message.

The worker shortage is having additional implications for healthcare systems. For example,Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers narrowly avoided a strike earlier this month over wages and working conditions, voting to ratify a four-year contract.

“This contract reflects our deep appreciation for the extraordinary commitment and dedication of our employees throughout our response to the COVID-19 pandemic while also ensuring that we remain affordable for our members in the future,” Christian Meisner, Kaiser’s senior vice president and chief human resources officer, said in a statement.

The union negotiated to receive across-the-board wage increases through 2025 and new safe staffing language, according to Healthcare Dive. Contract negotiations had dragged on for months, and if the union had struck, it would have been the largest strike the United States had seen in 2021. The strike could have crippled operations in the area as the 21,000 union members represent nearly 28 percent of Kaiser’s employees in Southern California.

Some hospitals are still struggling to recruit and retain staff because of vaccine mandates. The Wall Street Journal reports that some of the country’s largest hospital systems have dropped vaccine mandates for employees after a federal judge temporarily halted a Biden administration mandate that healthcare workers get vaccinated. HCA Healthcare, Tenet Healthcare, AdventHealth and Cleveland Clinic have dropped the mandates, allowing more employees to remain on the job. Thousands of healthcare professionals have either left the industry or lost their job for refusing the vaccine, The Wall Street Journal reports. As of September, 30 percent of workers at more than 2,000 hospitals across the country were unvaccinated, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mackenna Moralez is assistant editor with Healthcare Facilities Today.