Tag Archives: shortage

Lawmakers could change certification to ease paramedic shortage

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, Community Health, Health, Our Cities, , ,

By Sarah Atwood
Capital News Service

LANSING – Paramedics and emergency personnel are sharply divided over a plan that addresses the shortage of Michigan paramedics by creating a statewide certification program that would deviate from the national accreditation program.

 

Michigan looks at creating a statewide certification program for paramedics. (Photo from Pxhere.com)

A bill sponsored by Rep. Jeff Yaroch, R-Richmond, would allow the state to make its own requirements to be certified as a paramedic.

 

Yaroch previously spent 25 years as a firefighter and paramedic in Clinton Township. The bill recently passed the House, 102-6, and now goes to the state Senate, where it is likely to pass with bipartisan support.

To become licensed as a paramedic in Michigan, a person must be nationally accredited. The cost of becoming a licensed paramedic in Michigan can range from $1,400 to $12,000, according to Paramedic Training Spot, an online resource for those looking to become licensed paramedics.

With its own accreditation program, the state would no longer need to adhere to the national standards.

Trying to balance cost with need

Paramedics would still need to pass an examination proctored by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

 

That agency estimates $2 million would be required to establish a training program, with yearly costs of $1.6 million. Michigan now spends $2.3 million per year on EMS funding.

“Right now, a person needs national accreditation to be a paramedic,” said Angela Madden, the executive director of the Michigan Association of EMTs, which supports the bill. “That costs a lot of money, and needing national accreditation makes it harder for small paramedic departments to pay for certification.

“This means that these small departments won’t have paramedics and will have to shut down, leaving the people in that area without that care,” Madden said.

Shoring up the paramedic shortage

There are more than 1,000 open positions for paramedics in Michigan, and two paramedic departments have had to shut down, Madden said.

 

One is in Mason, in rural Ingham County. The other is in Pickford Township, in Chippewa County. The people living in these communities now have to wait longer for emergency care, which could be a life or death problem, she said.

“There’s no real difference between what this bill would do and the national accreditation program,” Madden said. “Students will still need to pass the Michigan test to be accredited.”

“The goal of this bill is to get more people to become paramedics,” Madden said. “I believe that this bill will enable more people to become paramedics and benefit communities across Michigan.”

But not everyone agrees.

Cost not the only issue

“I don’t think that, if passed, this bill will do much in terms of recruitment,” said Anthony Cerroni, a paramedic instructor coordinator in Dearborn Heights.

“It’s not an issue of money. It’s a generational issue. Kids aren’t choosing to become paramedics, just like they’re not choosing to become police officers or other public safety officials,” he said.

Cerroni said he is unsure if much can be done to encourage more people to become paramedics. Benefits have increased over the past five years, but not even the better pay is enough, he said.

“Another concern I have about the state having its own accreditation board is that a paramedic’s license might not be transferable to other states. A national requirement makes it so anyone can practice in any state without this concern,” he said.

Bryan Harmer, a full-time professor of emergency medical services at Lansing Community College who spent nearly 20 years as a paramedic, testified in a House committee hearing that the bill does not address the real causes of the paramedic shortage.

“This bill fails to address the root causes of our workforce shortage: low wages, bad working conditions and lack of professional advancement,” said Harmer. “It isn’t uncommon for EMS providers to work multiple jobs and well over 60 hours a week to make ends meet and feed their families.”

Making sure standards are met

It would be a waste of taxpayer money to create a state accreditation program when a national one exists, he told the committee last May. A state accreditation program could put lives at risk if it fails to adequately train paramedics.

“The most egregious error I ever encountered in EMS resulted from a paramedic who had recently graduated from a paramedic program in Michigan, back when unaccredited programs were permitted in Michigan,” Harmer testified. “This error resulted in the death of a young mother with two children.”

The bill does not mean paramedics could practice without a license from an accredited program, Madden said. She disagreed that paramedics would receive subpar training.

“Paramedics will be held to high standards through the Michigan state accreditation program,” Madden said. “My agency would never support a bill that could put patient lives in danger.”

Bill cosponsors are Reps. Terry Sabo, D-Muskegon, Sara Cambensy, D-Marquette, Gregory Markkanen, R-Hancock and Kelly Breen, D-Novi.

Supporters include Lake Michigan College and the Michigan Professional Fire Fighters Union. Opponents include the Michigan College of Emergency Physicians and Michigan Health and Hospital Association.

A Wyoming wedding vendor, like others in the industry, struggle to keep up with demand

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, City of Kentwood, City of Wyoming, Food, Hard News, Local Business, Local Food, Recreation, Restaurants, , , , ,

By Lindsay M. McCoy
Capital News Service

LANSING – “We’ve been in business for 37 years, and this is definitely the craziest season we have ever seen,” said Kevin Humphrey.

While there have been more requests to book Adeline Leigh’s services than in an average year, the company had to reduce the number of weddings booked this year to deal with worker shortages. (Supplied)

Humphrey is the office manager for Adeline Leigh Catering, a Wyoming business located at 1132 Chicago Dr. SW, that prepares food for hundreds of weddings each year.

Across the state, vendors like florists and caterers are preparing for a frantic 2022 season as the number of weddings is up 15% nationally from normal, according to Wedding Report data.

While there have been more requests to book Adeline Leigh’s services than in an average year, the company had to reduce the number of weddings booked this year to deal with worker shortages.

“We actually cut back to mediate labor issues,” said Humphrey.

Humphrey said the business is also ensuring employees’ time-off requests are honored to keep workers on board.

Adeline Leigh has booked approximately 300 weddings for the upcoming months, about 100 fewer than in 2019.

“There was a point where we were turning down 15 events a day, and not everyone was so understanding,” Humphrey said.

Kalin Sheick, the owner of Sweetwater Floral in Petoskey, said she expects a busier-than-normal season in the months ahead.

Sweetwater will provide floral arrangements for about 100 weddings this year across the state, which is an “immense jump” compared with previous years, said Sheick.

“We will usually average around 65 or 70 a year,” she said. “We only stopped at 100 because of staffing. We could have booked way more than that.”

Sheick said the store has hired additional staff to help tackle the increase, and it is training its employees to focus on taking care of themselves to prepare for the looming, long busy season.

“We know that we need extra help and need to support them as best as possible,” Sheick said.

Other problems vendors are preparing for are supply chain delays and a shortage of products.

“We’re feeling the impact of delay, just like every other industry,” she said. “Stuff that used to be easy to get – vases, hard goods and supplies – there’s a delay and you need to be patient.”

 

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many large flower farms shut down, causing a smaller supply of flowers, said Sheick.

When it comes to food, Adeline Leigh Catering has had to remove only a couple of items from its menu due to supply issues. (Supplied)

“It really squeezes the amount of product you’re able to get. But at the end of the day, there’s a flower shortage because there’s more weddings happening than ever before,” she said.

When it comes to food, Humphrey said it was lucky that his catering business had to remove only a couple of items from its menu.

The time and effort put into ordering supplies has greatly increased as well. What used to be an hour-long project for Humphrey now can take up to an entire work day, he said.

“We order from many suppliers, and it used to be ‘they’ve got the best price, we’ll go there.’ Now you have to find whoever has it,” Humphrey said.

Another change vendors are seeing is a growing number of events booked outside of the prime wedding season of May through October.

Shannon O’Berski, the director of external relations at Meadow Brook Hall in Rochester, says the event venue is handling more weddings on less typically booked days.

“We have seen an increase in interest in off-season events throughout the fall and winter,”O’Berski said. “And more couples are choosing to host Friday and Sunday weddings.”

Meadow Brook Hall is often booked for the entire season.

“We are certainly receiving many inquiries!,” O’Berski said, and reservations are already filling up for 2023.

 

Though the months ahead will be busy and stressful for wedding vendors, Sheick said her team at Sweetwater Floral is excited about the upcoming season.

“It’s just a really fun job and a good thing to be a part of.”

Capital News Service is provided by the Spartan News Room located at Michigan State University. CNS reporters cover state government for member newspapers and digital media outlets across the state of Michigan.

Real estate market still red hot, but could slow down

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, City of Kentwood, City of Wyoming, Finances, Hard News, Local Business, West Michigan, , ,

By Sydney Bowler
Capital News Service

 by Redfin, a full-service real estate brokerage, found that 68.8% of home offers written by Redfin agents nationally faced competition in February. (pxhere.com)

LANSING – “Pretty much every offer I put was a shot in the dark, where you’d just cross your fingers and pray and hope that it gets accepted,” said Corbin Holwerda of Grand Rapids.

 

Holwerda is a first-time homebuyer who has been looking for a house in Grand Rapids since mid-January.

 

“I’ve put in seven or eight offers, and it’s really tough because half of those I’m losing to all-cash offers,” he said. “I’m still a young adult. I don’t have $250,000 in the bank that I can just front and put up for a house.”

A recent study by Redfin, a full-service real estate brokerage, found that 68.8% of home offers written by Redfin agents nationally faced competition in February. That’s the highest share reported by its agents since at least April 2020.

“Even if we are able to go above asking (price), there are still people waiving inspections and going $50,000, $60,000 or $70,000 above asking in some cases,” Holwerda said.

According to a new Congressional Research Service report, the main factor causing record-high home prices is that more people are looking to buy houses than there are houses for sale.

Cash offers can help the sale of a home move more quickly. (pxhere.com)

It’s a question of supply and demand, the report said.

“We have people selling homes with 40 offers on one home,” said Shirley Smith, the executive officer of the Hillsdale County Board of Realtors.

“There is a huge amount of competition right now, and the reason for that is because inventory is low. House prices have been going up the last few years and inventory has not increased appreciably,” Smith said.

“I think we’re also seeing more cash offers because those are the offers that get accepted more quickly,” she said.

Sometimes offers are contingent on the sale of the buyer’s current home, a bank loan or inspections to be done, and that can take more time, she said.

But cash offers move the process along more quickly.

“Generally, when we have high housing prices like this, it doesn’t go on forever. I think I, and most Realtors, expect that in the not-so-distant future there will be a change in the trend,” she said.

According to Smith, projections from the National Association of Realtors say housing prices may increase 5% in the coming year, which is much lower than several years past.

 

“That might be a tapering off in the market,” she said.

According to the Case-Shiller Detroit Home Price Index, home prices in Detroit have gone up about 8.6% per year since January 2012. But from January 2021 to January 2022, prices rose 13.9%.

That can be compared with neighboring states’ large cities, like Cleveland, rising 13.3% and Chicago, rising 12.5%. Nationally, home prices rose 19.1% from January 2021 to January 2022, according to Case-Shiller’s national data.

“The interesting thing here (regarding the increases) is that in traditional years, only 3 to 5% of the housing on the market is actually new houses,” said Wayne State University economics professor Allen Goodman.

“As a result, most housing supply occurs kind of above the middle of the market. We don’t allow people to build new, low-quality houses,” said Goodman, who specializes in housing and health economics.

He said some new houses are resold multiple times and “as a result, the housing gets toward the upper end of the market, and what’s left there is sometimes said to filter down to other buyers.”

“A lot of this goes back to COVID, in part,” said Goodman. “To keep the economy growing, the federal government and Federal Reserve banks have had what were historically low interest rates. What it meant was that people who wanted to buy houses were faced with mortgage rates of like 3%.”

A combination of low interest rates and a smaller-than-traditional supply lead to increases in the price of housing. (pxhere.com)

“A combination of low interest rates and a smaller-than-traditional supply lead to increases in the price of housing,” Goodman said.

Monitoring estimates of the value of his own Huntington Woods home over the years, Goodman said it lost half its value from 2007 to 2009.

 

The value can vastly change by month. In one recent month, his home’s value was estimated to have increased around $30,000, but in a previous month it was estimated to have dropped $20,000.

“But really over the past year, it’s pretty much been the same, at least according to Zillow,” he said, referring to the online real estate-market national company.


Capital News Service is provided by the Spartan News Room located at Michigan State University. CNS reporters cover state government for member newspapers and digital media outlets across the state of Michigan.

Some Michigan community colleges push to offer four-year nursing degrees

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Some community colleges are pushing to offer four-year degrees in nursing. GRCC officials stated they currently have no plans to do so. (pxhere.com)

By Cameryn Cass
Capital News Service

Michigan community colleges want to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing to battle a shortage of nurses surging across the state and fueled by the pandemic.

Demand for intensive care and emergency nurses grew by 186% in the past year nationwide, according to a 2021 study by Incredible Health, a nationwide company that helps nurses find jobs.

The Henry Ford Hospital System in Detroit has already arranged a program to soon fly in 500 nurses from the Philippines to meet its needs, said Michael Hansen, the president of the Michigan Community College Association. More are coming from Canada.

“We’ve got students here in Michigan who are willing and able, if we could just let our colleges train them,” Hansen said.

Community colleges have been interested in offering four-year programs since Gov. Jennifer Granholm recommended they do so in the early 2000s, Hansen said. A provision in the Community College Act of 1966 prohibits community colleges from conferring bachelor degrees. It requires legislation for that to be allowed.

The law was amended so now they can offer bachelor degrees in four areas — maritime, culinary, energy production and concrete technology — to meet local demands, Hansen said.

They have wanted to do more than nursing, but that’s being proposed now because of the acute shortage, Hansen said. Community colleges traditionally respond to local workforce needs.

Advocates say allowing community colleges to also offer four-year programs would make access easier for adult students, which would help with the nursing shortage.

Opponents say it’s unnecessary and say there is no unmet need. They worry there might be too many colleges to choose from as it is.

Since COVID-19 has intensified the need for nurses, community colleges want to offer programs to help, Hansen said.

Jackson College, Lake Michigan College, Schoolcraft College and Northwestern Michigan College are among the community colleges interested in offering nursing programs, Hansen said.

Representatives from Grand Rapids Community College stated they have no plans to offer a four-year program and in fact, GRCC does not offer any four-year degrees in any of its programs. GRCC does offer an associate degree in nursing which has been approved by the Michigan Board of Nursing and accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing. Those with an associate degree in nursing can enter a number of fields including hospitals, nursing care facilities, doctor’s offices, outpatient care centers, and specialty hospitals.

However, Rep. John Roth, R-Traverse City said the two-year registered nurse programs and online courses community colleges offer now are insufficient for providing the hands-on experiences nurses need. Roth is working on legislation to allow colleges to offer four-year nursing degrees.

“They offer a very good program, it’s just not enough for what hospitals are requiring now,” Roth said.

An associate degree sufficed in the past, but the baseline hiring requirement in most hospitals is a bachelor of science degree in nursing, Roth said.

Many jobs now require schooling beyond an associate degree, a demand community colleges could help satisfy, Hansen said. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in 2018, 41. 5 percent of registered nurses were required to have a bachelor’s of nursing degree, 31.1 percent were required to have a vocational associate degree, and 20 percent were required to have an associate’s degree. GRCC has a waiting list for its associate in nursing degree program.

But Daniel Hurley, the chief executive officer of the Michigan Association of State Universities, calls the proposal irrational. It does nothing to produce more nurses, he said.

The few four-year degree programs community colleges offer now see little demand, Hurley said.

In 2020, Michigan granted 58 bachelor’s degrees from community colleges; 44 of them were from Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Hurley said. The demand for four-year programs at community colleges isn’t there.

Plus, the high school graduation rate is expected to drop by 15% between 2019 and 2037, which means fewer prospective college students, Hurley said.

“We need more students right now, we don’t need more four-year institutions in the state,” Hurley said.

Managing Editor Joanne Bailey-Boorsma contributed to this story.

Blood supply shortage has one local company hoping to serve as an inspiration to others to host drives

3-bottom, Citizen Journalism, City of Wyoming, Health, Local Business, Non-Profits, , , ,
According to the Kent County Health Department the local blood supply is at a critical low. (pxhere.com)

By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

For a person with sickle cell disease, a blood transfusion remains one of the most effective and proven treatments, according to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. So imagine heading to the hospital and possibly not being able to receive that treatment.

This is what many West Michigan hospitals and blood clinics are facing as blood donations have dropped “to critically levels” since the COVID pandemic, according to Kent County Health Department’s Administrative Health Officer Dr. Adam London.

 

“Donations have been down certainly due to the pandemic,” said Versiti Area Vice President and Director of Donor Services Dawn Kaiser, during a recent interview on A Matter of Public Health podcast, hosted by the Kent County Health Department. “We were down about 40 percent in 2020 and into 2021 because of high schools, colleges, and university not hosting — kids are at home learning — and that is where we get our brand new donors and about 40 percent of our blood.”

The same is true for many businesses, with people working from home, making it difficult for organizations to host mobile drives.

One such Versiti blood drive partner that has faced those struggles has been SpartanNash which has hosted blood drives at its offices and distribution center, both located in Byron Center, since 2015. The grocery company received the Beacon of Hope award in 2019 from Versiti for its blood drives which in had collected 560 donations treating about 1,680 patients that year. In the past six years, SpartanNash employees have donated more than 2,000 pints of blood.

According to Versiti Blood Center, it receives about 60 percent of its blood from mobile blood drives hosted by local businesses and other organizations. (pxhere.com)

“We have been a longtime Versiti blood drive partner,” said SpartanNash Community Engagement Specialist Courtney Carlson. “With COVID, we discovered we just couldn’t do that as our distribution center was overloaded with supply chain issues and the risk of safety, we had to cancel our drives, especially during the COVID time.”

SpartanNash was able to host a drive in March of 2020, just as the state was starting to shutdown. But like many manufacturing and distribution centers, visitors were not allowed in to the SpartanNash distribution center and many of their office workers worked from home.

 

As the world resets itself and more employees return to work, events like blood drives can happen, according to London.

 

“Blood donation sites are a very low risk place in terms of COVID,” London said during the A Matter of Public Health podcast. “I am not aware of any outbreaks associated with a blood draw event and the majority of the blood we have in our blood supply comes from the sort of community events at churches and schools and places of work. We really need those places to step up and allow Versiti and other blood banks to come in and do their important work.”

SpartanNash hosted offsite blood drives over the past several months but next week will be having its first onsite blood drive since the pandemic at its distribution center. While the offsite donation drives helped, Carlson said it is much easier for employees to donate at their work place since they can simply take an hour, donate, and then get back to work versus having to drive to another location.

As for safety, Carlson said they have confidence in Versiti which requires face masks, has temperature checks before donating, cleans between donors, and works at making everyone comfortable.

 

“We are hoping that by letting the community know that we are hosting mobile blood drives at our facilities that it will inspire other work places and organizations to do the same,” she said.

London noted that about one in several people visiting a hospital will need blood and that the shortage is critical.

While O-type is always needed, blood from a diverse pool is very important, Kaiser said.

“Everybody has an A, B, or O blood type. Everybody is pretty familiar with that,” she said. “There is also about an alphabet after that most people don’t know. So a little more specific type.”

For African-Americans, 44 percent of them have a blood type called RO in addition to their A, B, O blood type. According to the Centers for Disease control, one our of 365 African-Americans have sickle cell anemia with the major treatment being blood transfusions. A person with sickle cell anemia may have 10 to 15 units of blood in a month and because of that need, would benefit from blood from someone with the same or similar ethnicity, according to Kaiser.

“That is why we are asking communities of color to roll up their sleeves and give back to their communities,” she said.

To host a blood drive or to donate, visit Versiti’s website, Versiti.org.