Medicaid cuts may worsen state’s nursing shortage

The effect that Medicaid cuts will have on New Yorkers’ access to patient care has dominated concerns about the federal spending bill, but the ones providing care are expected to feel the pain as well. 

Nurses, of course, are paid by hospitals, and if some of hospitals’ income streams disappear due to changes in eligibility and access to Medicaid, their future could become murky. In the North Country, for example, The University of Vermont Health Network is uncertain what the changes in funding will mean for them or their nursing staff, though rural hospitals are widely expected to take a hit. 

“It’s difficult to predict their real-life implications for hospitals like Alice Hyde Medical Center (AHMC), Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital (CVPH) and Elizabethtown Community Hospital (ECH),” the hospital network said in a statement. “These hospitals serve some of the most rural parts of the state and many in the community rely on Medicaid and Medicare for their health care. So any cut to Medicaid will have a significant impact and challenge us to rethink how we provide care to our communities.”

The left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute estimated that roughly 19,000 jobs will be cut from hospitals. The New York State Nurses Association and are fearing the worst for their more than 42,000 members. NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said that in some cases, nurses are already losing their jobs, pointing to the recent layoffs at New York-Presbyterian Health system. Executives at New York-Presbyterian blamed the layoffs partly on the looming cuts, though the union contended that patients receiving Medicaid or Medicare made up a small share of the hospital's patients. 

Hagans is now preparing for negotiations for a new contract that will cover more than 17,000 nurses, and she worries that the Medicaid cuts could lead to staffing shortages.

“We knew nurses were walking away from the bedside because of the poor working conditions,” Hagans told City & State. “Now, with the cut coming up, we're going to have less staff, and patients will not be taken care of. Less nurses, worse care for the patients, because nurses, we were already working very tight, very short. We didn't have enough nurses at the bedside because of the poor working conditions.”

The nursing workforce in New York and across the country has been struggling to fill roles since the pandemic thinned out staff due to a combination of poor working conditions and pay imbalances. Ultimately, patients will be the ones bearing the consequences of a reduced nursing workforce. “People will die,” Hagans warned.