At Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs, Conn., inpatient and outpatient surgery has been halted since June 9. The hospital said on Wednesday that it would seek to discontinue inpatient surgical services permanently, and would shut down its labor and delivery unit, in part because of staffing shortages, according to Mary Orr, a hospital spokeswoman.
The shortage of nurses in Florida is “probably the worst” that hospitals have experienced in decades, said Mary Mayhew, chief executive of the Florida Hospital Association, which represents more than 200 hospitals and health systems in the state.
Part of the problem, Ms. Mayhew said, was the large number of nurses who were leaving regular hospital jobs to earn more money as temporary and contract nurses. “We have a turnover rate that is 25 to 30 percent, the highest we have ever seen in the decades we’ve been tracking that data,” she said.
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