The health care crisis in Michigan hasn’t let up, even as life has largely returned to “normal,” more than three years after the pandemic started. Severe staffing shortages are slowing down the system and making it harder for patients to get the care they need.
If you’ve been hospitalized or in the ER recently, you’ve seen it first-hand: Bed shortages mean patients can be warehoused in the ER for hours, even days. Ambulances have to get rerouted. And nurses say they are dangerously understaffed, leading to even more burnout and shortages.
That’s despite the fact that taxpayers have given Michigan hospitals billions of dollars since the start of COVID — even as CEOs and hospital executives are making millions.
On Wednesday and Thursday on Michigan Radio, Morning Edition and Stateside are looking at the causes of the staffing crisis, the effects on patients and healthcare workers, and possible solutions. Tune in Wednesday and Thursday on Morning Edition from 5 to 9 a.m. and on Stateside at 3 and 8 p.m.
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The Michigan Nurses Association says mandating maximum nurse-to-patient ratios would make patients safer. But every single hospital and health system in the state is opposed, an industry spokesperson said. -
The deal comes after nurses recently voted unanimously to authorize a potential strike. -
The Safe Patient Care Act, the lasting impact of slavery-era court decisions, and the feast of fun at Lesbian Social. -
Hospitals are seeing ongoing staffing shortages. But they've also seen rising profits. We talk about how and how much hospitals profited during COVID–19. -
An ER nurse in Traverse City talks about the unprecedented stress nurses and other hospital staff are facing right now. Plus, a nursing researcher weighs in on the solutions to healthcare staffing shortages. -
Stateside spoke with Nikia Parker, an ER nurse and paramedic in the Traverse City area, about the conditions of being an ER nurse today, how those conditions have caused so many nurses to leave the field, and what this all means for patient care. -
The charges resulting from the 2022 GOP gubernatorial petition fraud, an author on his new cinema history book, hospital system profits during the pandemic, and what a partial shutdown of Line 5 in Wisconsin could mean for Michigan.
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The Michigan Nurses Association says limiting the number of patients per nurse is a "matter of life and death." But the hospital industry says it simply cannot hire nurses that "don't exist." -
Michigan hospitals are struggling to maintain safe staffing levels. The state currently has a nursing shortage and many nurses say they plan to leave the profession. -
Today, changes to Michigan's primary system in anticipation of the presidential election calendar. Then, a conflict on beavers versus trout and how nursing shortages impact healthcare workers and patients.
