Rx for the nursing shortage - Health Care: Business Briefs from Across South Florida

South Florida CEO, March, 2004 by Barbara Perkins

A report from the Florida Hospital Association indicates that at the rate things are going, Florida will likely be short 61,000 nurses by 2020. So Palm Beach County, for one, is fighting back. First, Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has broken ground on a new $20 million, 75,000-square-foot nursing school building. Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth, meanwhile, will offer courses in nursing at night and on weekends for students with day jobs. Another ripple from Boca is startup firm Medical Staffing Direct, which has launched a new internet-based program that allows nurses to go online, see what's available and book shifts directly with hospitals. That kind of creativity is already working in Miami-Dade, where Mercy Hospital has instituted MercyBid, which allows nurses to go online, see what overtime shifts are available, then bid on the open shifts. Florida International University is on the offensive too, recently approving a new PhD program at its nursing school--which could help staff those new classes at FAU. Sound like healthy ideas to us.

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