Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association CEO Jared Kosin says people get stuck in hospitals when smaller providers of what’s called “step-down care” — non-hospital environments like hospice and nursing homes — can’t stay afloat.
Kelly Aicardi of Juneau’s Catholic Community Services in the hospice loan closet on Dec. 14, 2022.
Now home and hospice patients are going without specialized care and even resorting to emergency room visits. It’s one of the consequences of a broader nursing shortage that’s affecting medical care across the state and shows no signs of slowing down. Walker-Tolles says they were priced out as the need for traveling nurses increased dramatically and prices soared over the past few years.
Jared Kosin is the president and CEO of the Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association, a trade group that represents hospitals and care centers. He says consolidations like the ones in Juneau are essentially closures, they just look different. He described a negative feedback loop that’s dogging the state’s healthcare providers.
“If you can’t discharge out to the lower level of care, the system really grinds to a halt,” he said. Back at the hospice loan closet, Kelly Aicardi was figuring out how to manage the non-medical services she can still provide.
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