As hospitals across the US struggle to fill open positions (despite spending millions on traditional travel staffing agencies), an Upstate New York hospital association decided to try a new (and increasingly popular) approach: bring the “travel staff” in-house.

In October 2022, the Iroquois Healthcare Association (IHA), which serves about 50 hospitals and health systems primarily in Central and Western New York, made its first hire through Upstate Works—a program that allows member facilities to hire travel staff without having to pay the hefty fees traditional agencies often require.

By Jan. 3, more than three dozen clinicians had been hired across five of the six participating IHA hospitals. This amounts to an estimated “total savings of over $351,000 (based on the average 13-week travel contract),” Lauren Ford, IHA’s senior director of data analytics and strategy, told Healthcare Brew. And those savings are only expected to grow into the millions as the program expands to a dozen other hospitals.

“This is the future of the staffing model,” Ford said.

The in-house model, which many health systems across the US have already embraced, threatens to upend traditional travel staffing agencies that commanded high fees amid increased demand for travel nurses and other health workers during the Covid-19 pandemic—two or three times more than pre-pandemic rates, according to groups like the American Hospital Association.

Developed with technology and management services provider Healthcare Workforce Logistics, IHA’s Upstate Works lets participating facilities source staff through websites like Wanderly, an online repository of healthcare staffing jobs. FlexUp, a third-party company, hires the contract workers and bills the hospital a flat administrative rate negotiated by IHA. Keep reading here.—SY

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New York City will expand medication abortion through its city-run sexual health clinics starting Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams announced.

Mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used to end a pregnancy, will be available in the Bronx before expanding into Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn by the end of the year, Adams said.

Previously, the drugs were offered at the city’s 11 municipal hospitals. NYC Health + Hospitals, the public hospital system, administered 1,114 medication abortions in 2021, up from 537 in 2019, according to a Freedom of Information request.

“We [would] have a lot more research and care options for women’s health if we weren’t so afraid of saying the word ‘vagina,’” Adams said at a city hall press conference. “No other city in the nation or the world has a public health department that is providing medication abortion. We are the first.”

The policy change comes days before Roe v. Wade would have marked its 50th anniversary. The landmark Supreme Court decision was overturned last June.

New York City and state officials have taken strides to improve abortion access over the last six months, including growing the ranks of medical professionals who can perform the procedure at city hospitals and funding efforts to help low-income people terminate their pregnancies—regardless of residency. Adams also signed legislation in August 2022 to ensure medication abortion would be available and free of cost.

The clinics will treat anyone, regardless of their immigration status or ability to pay. The expanded access to medication abortion is part of a $1.2 million effort to provide “a suite of sexual health services,” said city health department spokesperson Patrick Gallahue.—AE

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Amanda at amandae@morningbrew.com. For completely confidential conversations, ask Amanda for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: About 16% of inmates on Rikers Island have a serious mental illness. (NY1)

Quote: “We’re identifying that these stoves are not as clean as we thought. It’s not just a climate or a health concern. But it’s both at the same time.”—Eric Lebel, a senior scientist at policy institute PSE Healthy Energy on gas stove emissions (Wired)

Read: Author Matthew Salesses writes about his final suicide attempt as his wife died of cancer. (Time)

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• Analysis: Healthcare increasingly unaffordable
• US healthcare struggles to tackle maternal behavioral health crisis
• Why health systems are big targets for ransomware