An overwhelming majority of home-based care professionals say that the hiring environment is not improving at the start of 2022.
In a LinkedIn survey conducted by Home Health Care News, 62% of 377 total respondents said the hiring environment is not getting better, while only 21% said it was. About 16% said they were not sure.
Staffing continues to be the most hot-button issue in both home health and home care. It’s been addressed ad nauseam, but is still not going away.
In another poll taken during a panel at the Home Care 100 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this year, the majority of attendees said the staffing situation was likely to “get worse before it gets better.” A smaller amount believed it would stay the same.
Almost no one believed it would immediately get better.
Some executives, such as Barb Jacobsmeyer – the CEO of Enhabit Home Health & Hospice – were more bullish, however. Jacobsmeyer told HHCN that she was “excited” to turn the page on recruitment and turnover, and instead focus on retention.
That was despite the fact that Enhabit – formerly Encompass Health’s (NYSE: EHC) home health and hospice segment – reported losing a “minimum” of 1,700 admissions in its home health segment in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Likewise, in February, LHC Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LHCG) executives reported that cost constraints due to labor issues cost the company approximately 2,500 admissions and a loss of $13.8 million in revenue over the same time period.
Minimum wage increases, COVID-19 surges and a mixture of other factors have additionally played into the hiring crunch many in home-based care are facing.
On the home care side, Home Care Pulse’s annual benchmarking study recently highlighted that caregiver churn stayed mostly flat in 2021, but was still at an undesirable 64%.
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