Flaccid tax receipts have not deterred members of the Legislature from seeking to spend more money. Among the measures arising from the Interim study of nursing home and assisted living needs is House Bill 1004, which would create a new incentive payment to recruit nurses and aides in nursing and assisted living facilities.
The bill offers $10,000 incentive payments to registered nurses and practical nurses, $5,000 to nurse aides, and $2,500 to medication aides. To get the incentive, those health care staff must work full-time in a licensed care facility for at least three years. If the facility is in a community with fewer than 2,500 people, the facility pays a quarter of the incentive while the state pays the rest. In bigger towns, the facility and the state split the cost 50–50. The facility can pay the incentive at any time, but the state pays its share only after the nurse or aide works for three years.
HB 1004 limits the recruitment assistance program (can we call it RAP?) to sixty participants each year. I’m unclear on whether that means sixty nurses and aides can get RAP pay each year or if only sixty staff can be working toward RAP pay each year. If the former, more liberal interpretation applies, if the program maxes out at sixty recruits each year, and if the program recruits equal numbers of each type of worker, the cost to the state could range from $206,250 if they all work in bigger towns to $309,375 if they all work in smaller towns. If the program recruited all nurses and no aides and all to smaller towns, the state’s RAP cost would max out at $450,000.
According to 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, South Dakota has the highest concentration of registered nurses in the statewide workforce. Registered nurses in South Dakota make an average of $51,100, 28% below the national average. Nationwide, nursing salaries tend to be lower in nursing care facilities than in hospitals, clinics, and in home health care.
Note that the last time the Legislature dealt with a major salary-gap-induced labor shortage—i.e., last Session’s effort to raise teacher pay—the Legislature had to come up with a new source of revenue and a complicated, assumption- and agenda-ridden formula to indirectly put more money toward teachers’ average salary. HB 1004 simply orders the Secretary of Health to write each RAP nurse or aide a check. (Then-Rep., now Senator-Elect Lance Russell had a proposal almost that simple for teacher pay last year, but the Legislature ash-canned that idea without much discussion.)
Last year’s teacher pay effort targeted around $60 million at the entire public K-12 teacher workforce, over 9,000 professionals. HB 1004 aims at most $450,000 at 60 different workers a year, out of about 12,000 registered nurses, 430 nurse practitioners, and 6,200 nursing assistants. The Legislature could pay a substantial chunk of this RAP by reimbursing fewer trips to ALEC propaganda conferences. HB 1004 is far from a budget buster, but it is the first thermometer we can stick in our turkeys legislators to see if they are willing to spend any new money amidst weak tax receipts.
So rather than pay folks what they are worth in SD, we are going to try to keep 60 people happy out of over 18,000 working professionals. The phrase “spitting in the ocean” comes to mind. But at least they can say they did something, right?
but it is the first thermometer we can stick in our turkeys legislators to see if they are willing to spend any new money amidst weak tax receipts.
Where do you plan to stick the thermometer and will you be switching it around from one orifice to another?
Nurses are able to be more mobile than teachers. Often I’ve seen my daughter turn in her notice and have another position, with higher pay, within hours. Teachers are more locked into a yearly deal. With nurse reciprocity and with most nurses in SoDak living near the border, the state has to compete with Minnesota wages, to a point. The legislature better find the money for both teachers and nurses or the next gen will be to dumb to know when they’re sick.
Hmmm … If you pay a RN $10 grand after working 3 years in a nursing home, wouldn’t that money be seed to move to another state with higher wages and get settled? Could you pay the $10 grand up front and get a signed contract to work in the nursing home or any SoDak nursing home for 3 years or a bulldog bill collector (think Chuck Brennan’s knee-cappers in Vegas) will get the money back if you quit early?
$10K extra for three years’ commitment is just $3,333 raise per year, half the raw-dollar raise and, I think, an even lower fraction of the percentage raise that the Legislature passed this year to give teachers only half the raise they needed to be regionally competitive.