Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #106681

Karen L. Courtney, RN, MSN¹, George Demiris, PhD², Shari L. Riley, JD, MHA², and Wilbert E. Meyer, MA FACHE¹. (1) Dept. of Health Management & Informatics, University of Missouri - Columbia, 324 Clark Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, 573-882-1625, Karen.Courtney@mizzou.edu, (2) Department of Health Management and Informatics, University of Missouri-Columbia, 324 Clark Hall, Columbia, MO 65211

Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) are an integral component of rural health care delivery. CAH are limited service facilities that are mandated to provide 24-hour emergency care to their rural constituents but are increasingly expanding to offer a wider range of health services to their communities.

As with other health care systems and providers, local and state nursing shortages affect the operation of CAH. In a recent survey of CAH administrators, 73.1% of actively recruiting CAH reported recruitment of experienced nurses as “very difficult” and reported vacancy rates of 10.5% (CAH/Flex National Tracking Project, 2003).

Given the unique characteristics of CAH, their rural locations and reported difficulties in recruiting experienced nurses, this project assessed the available nursing workforce for CAH in Missouri. Location is a critical component of measuring the available nursing workforce; therefore this analysis used a combination of data visualization within a geographic information system (ArcGIS 9.0) and spatial and classic statistics (SPSS 11.0). For this project, analysis of available nursing workforce included the following registered nurses per population categories: total number, full-time, and part time.

The results suggest that the available nursing workforce for counties with a CAH is not significantly different than counties without a CAH. In some select cases, the available nursing workforce was significantly greater for a CAH county than surrounding non-CAH counties. The recruitment implications for organizational and policy of these available workforce similarities between counties with and without CAH will be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Articulate workforce needs of Critical Access Hospitals
• 2. Identify similarities and differences in available workforce distribution between counties with and without a Critical Access Hospital
• 3. Discuss organizational and policy implications of findings

Keywords: Health Care Delivery, Workforce

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.