According to a Feb. 2023 Zippia report, 4.7 million nurses are expected to retire within the U.S. by 2030. Over the next 10 years, 13 million nurses will be needed worldwide to slow the staffing shortage faced by the industry. In the U.S. alone, 1.2 million new nurses will be needed by 2030. Health care facilities and lawmakers alike are looking for new ways to improve.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed a bill on March 8, 2023 to kick off the state’s “Skilled Nursing Home and Hospital Nurses Retention Loan Repayment Program,” an incentive for local nurses to help bolster retention efforts. The program will be funded with money from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act.
“This legislation will strengthen the pipeline of medical professionals and improve the quality of care for all Mississippians,” Governor Reeves said, according to Nurse.org. “Innovation is the solution to our healthcare challenges and it is the solution to keeping talented Mississippians here.”
Senate Bill 2373 incentivizes nurses to work in Mississippi after graduating from nursing school by allowing nurses that received an education within the state to earn up to $6,000 per year for up to three years.
“Because the program was funded through the federal ARPA funds, there was not enough time for students to complete that full five-plus year process before the federal close-out year of 2026,” Jennifer Rogers, Director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid, said. “So it really just became a timing issue, that we could not administer the program as it was set up using federal funds.”
Not all are impressed by the legislation, however.
“We will take everything that we can get,” Dr. Kim Hoover, Mississippi Hospital Association’s chief operating officer told Action News 5. “The problem is that this doesn’t really address what we have going on right now.
“I think where it hits home is that if we don’t have nurses and other staff in the hospitals, it affects not only the patient care, it affects whether or not you can actually get in the hospital, how long you stay in an emergency department, if you need to be transferred, where you get transferred, how far away you go.”
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