Health care worker shortage continues in southern West Virginia

BECKLEY, WV (WVNS) — In 2023, the Health Resources and Services Administration declared that a healthcare worker shortage in the U.S. was a national crisis.

Many health care workers in southern West Virginia have told 59News that the region is in crisis due to a lack of qualified health care workers, including specialists, psychiatrists, physicians, emergency medical technicians, ambulance drivers and nurses.

The 2023 Healthcare Workforce Report showed that West Virginia hospitals employ around 49,000 medical workers, which is a shortage. The reasons given were declining college enrollment, an aging workforce and fewer people entering the health care field, along with the aftermath of Covid-19.

Dr. Hassan Jafary, a Beckley psychiatrist, said he has, for years, informally recruited other specialists to the region.

Dr. Jafary said that, while university health care networks have begun operating across the state, the university system does not offer higher pay for physicians, as a recruitment incentive.

Small-town hospitals, on the other hand, often offer larger salaries to recruit, and the student loans of physicians are also paid, in many cases, as an incentive for them to work in rural West Virginia.

Dr. Jafary said that physicians who accept the positions at local hospitals often stay three years, or just long enough to meet student loan pay-off requirements, and that they then leave the area because they become overwhelmed with the patient load in short-staffed hospitals.

“They want to enjoy their life like any other human being also but when they come here, one doctor, one specialist, is working around the clock,” said Dr. Jafary.

He added that hospital administrators could develop a plan to control the burn-out physicians experience prior to leaving.

“The hospitals need to understand that we should not make them burn out,” noted Dr. Jafary.
He said on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, that physicians from other states and countries have declined to come to West Virginia and to stay in more metropolitan areas because of the perception that there is a higher risk of medical malpractice lawsuits in West Virginia and because they have different goals for educating children and recreation.

“A local, small town like our town, it’s very hard to recruit, because not everybody’s interested in going whitewater rafting or hiking,” Dr. Jafary explained.

Not only state hospitals are seeing a shortage.

The March of Dimes reports that much of southern West Virginia, including Wyoming, Summers, McDowell and Monroe counties are considered “maternity care deserts,” meaning pregnant women can’t access adequate care locally.

Only pregnant residents of Raleigh and Greenbrier counties have “full access” to local maternity care, according to March of Dime statistics.

The HRSA Health Workforce Report 2021 reported that there were 260 obstetricians-gynecologists in West Virginia in 2018, with a need for 280.

By 2030, the study predicted, state residents would need 240 OB-GYNs but only 200 would be available.

The study was finished prior to the Supreme Court of the United States decision in Dobbs, which took away the Constitutional right for pregnant women to privately make their own health care decisions if they need an abortion.

Following the SCOTUS decision in 2022, West Virginia lawmakers passed a law prohibiting doctors from offering abortion care to pregnant women inside the state, in most circumstances.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) officials have reported that OB-GYN residents are over eight times more likely to change their location from states like West Virginia, where politicians have limited abortion access for patients.

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