Kentucky's hospitals are facing critical workforce challenges that are expected to worsen in the coming years.

That's according to new reports by the Kentucky Hospital Association.

But the group said it has formed partnerships that will hopefully move the needle in the other direction.

Kentucky is suffering from an acute shortage of health care workers.

And while this is a national problem, it has hit our state particularly hard.

These reports show this is a serious issue that is going to require immediate but ongoing attention.

We surveyed every hospital in the state, and the new study indicates there were nearly 13,000 job vacancies in hospitals across the state at the end of 2022, although there was a slight reduction in nursing vacancies from the prior year, nearly 5000 of these openings were for registered nurses or are ends, and there were over 300 vacancies for LPN or licensed practical nurses.

Job turnover remains a concern.

Nearly 23% of our ends left their hospital position last year and had to be replaced.

And that's about the same percent is in the prior year.

As you can see, the shortage of providers is not limited to nurses.

It's being felt throughout the entire hospital of other key positions in hospitals, particularly laboratory imaging and respiratory therapy, also continue to have very high vacancies.

For patients, these vacancies mean longer wait times for treatment.

For caregivers, it can lead to burnout and for hospitals, it means higher expenses for labor.

The current situation is serious, so we wanted to know what does the future look like?

The study also evaluated whether the nursing supply will be adequate to meet Kentuckians health care needs.

The study found no appreciable improvement in 13 years.

By 2035, we will only have 90% of the ends needed for patient care and only 76% of the LPN that are needed.

Kentucky would need to increase the number of orange by about 21% each year and increase the number of patients by 63% each year to fill the gap.

This will be a challenge because the number of younger people of working age in Kentucky is shrinking.

We need to be sure that we have an adequate supply of health care workers, not just for today, but in the future to meet our needs.

We and our partners are addressing this challenge.

We formed the Workforce Committee to work in conjunction with our allies in Nursing Higher Education and the Kentucky Chamber.

Our goals are to create additional pathways for people to join the health care workforce, to enable hospitals to retire, retain and grow clinical staff, and ensure that families have the medical care they need to thrive.

So to do this, we're focused on three areas expanding Kentucky's health care workforce pipeline, removing barriers to health care education, retaining the health care workforce and redesigning models of care, even with all of us working together.

And if we do everything the right way, there's still going to be a challenge, as the numbers show.

We're committed to taking all the steps necessary to serve our patients.