CRMC to Use More Contract Labor Amid Nurse Shortage

A national nursing shortage means more more contract labor to serve patients at Cookeville Regional Medical Center.

CRMC CEO Paul Korth said that the hospital has used contractors before, but the pandemic has exacerbated the need to hire nurses through agencies.

“A lot of the nurses got pulled throughout America to a lot of those difficult COVID areas to start with and it’s reduced the number of nurses available to hire, so we had to purchase contract labor to cover that,” said Korth.

Korth said typically CRMC is able to hire individuals without contract labor from nursing programs at Tennessee Tech and surrounding areas.