Also on today’s menu:
Traveling Nurses Come At A Cost
Governor Seeks Flexibility For Affordable Housing
Colonel Kevin Jordan, chief of The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Law Enforcement Division, is warning that, despite the recent cold weather, “Caution is in order for those going out onto any ice, especially following the recent extreme fluctuations in temperature and precipitation. With erratic weather conditions, some areas of ice may look safe, but may not be. We are urging people to check the ice thickness before going out onto any frozen water body.”
The department says it is never advisable to drive vehicles onto the ice. Even those on foot should first determine the thickness of the ice by using an ice chisel or auger, and continue doing so while venturing further out, because the ice will not be uniformly thick. Snow-covered ice, especially, can be deceivingy.
The U.S. Army Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory in Hanover advises that there should be a minimum of 6 inches of hard ice for foot travel, and 8–10 inches of hard ice for snow machine or off-highway recreational vehicle travel.
Traveling Nurses Come At A Cost
Between increased case loads because of the pandemic and a long-standing shortage of nursing staff, hospitals and nursing homes have had a difficult time maintaining enough nurses to care for their patients. The shortage has prompted New Hampshire officials to abandon requirements for nurses to be vaccinated, believing that it is better to potentially infect wards with COVID-19 than to have close them down because of a lack of nursing staff.
One solution has been to hire more “traveling nurses” — healthcare workers with agencies that provide temporary staffing. Traveling nurses enable facilities to keep beds open, writes Roberta Baker in the Laconia Daily Sun, but they can cost two to three times what a staff nurse is paid, and their contracts usually last only 90 to 180 days. When staff nurses leave, some of them agree to work for their original employers in temporary assignments that pay double what they previously earned.
Hourly rates will vary based on supply and demand, and staffing agencies collect hefty fees. As Mike DellaVecchia, a staff nurse in the emergency room at Huggins Hospital in Wolfeboro, said, “paying rental doctors and rental nurses is not sustainable. The traveling nurses aren’t making all the money. It’s the big agencies.”
Governor Seeks Flexibility For Affordable Housing
Governor Chris Sununu has written to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, seeking flexibility in how states may use funds allocated under the Emergency Rental Assistance program created by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. “Since March 15, 2021, New Hampshire has been providing eligible households financial assistance under the ERA programs,” he wrote. “New Hampshire has consistently taken advantage of other flexibilities granted by Treasury to develop its rental assistance program to suit the needs ofthe state and local communities, while complying with the requirements set forth in applicable agreements, statutes, and guidance.”
He continued, “[A] lack of affordable housing impacts all socioeconomic groups, but the greatest impact falls on those with more limited means and too often weighs heaviest on the shoulders of New Hampshire’s working families. As such, I am requesting that Treasury provide additional flexibility for uses of ‘other housing related expenses due directly or indirectly to COVID-19’ to better meet housing stability needs.”
The goal is to provide incentives for public-private partnerships that can provide those necessary units.
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