As hospitals across the state continue to look at different ways to recruit and retain teams, we know that nurses are a key component. Registered nurses (RN), licensed practical nurses (LPN), and nursing assistants make up 41% of the hospital workforce.
The latest quarterly data from your hospitals show that one in every eight hospital RN positions remains vacant, with LPN vacancies at 21.9%.
To help you shore up your existing teams and add new, talented professionals to our hospitals, MHA has been working on several fronts:
- In Annapolis, our collective advocacy has led to many workforce wins and needed Board of Nursing reforms. We are currently collecting your thoughts on what legislation will be most important to the field for 2025 and educating legislators.
- Across the state, we are partnering with higher education and others to ensure we have a homegrown pipeline of health care professionals.
- In the public, we are actively engaging Marylanders to JoinMdHealth through the third year of the digital workforce recruitment campaign.
Since January 2023, the campaign ads have been seen on 21.7 million screens. Over 123,000 users have visited the JoinMdHealth website, where we direct visitors to your hospitals’ career openings or to educational opportunities to help them qualify for these in-demand careers.
Our member-led Workforce Taskforce has been the driving force behind much of this work and most of the campaign ads and content feature your own incredible employees.
We will continue to gather your input and update you as we work on an agenda for the 2025 legislative session and the relaunch JoinMdHealth paid media for 2025.
Please reach out to find out how you and your teams can be part of our efforts to grow and strengthen your hospital workforce.
Melony G. Griffith
President & CEO