Henry Ford Health System to recruit 500 nurses from the Philippines to fill labor gaps

Henry Ford Health System is turning to immigration to solve its ongoing nursing shortage.

The Detroit-based health system filed paperwork last week with international recruiting firms to hire 500 nurses from the Philippines over the next few years.

Henry Ford Health has about 1,000 open nursing positions across its five hospitals and outpatient centers and is struggling to keep up with its patient load, Bob Riney, COO and president of health care operations, told Crain's from the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island.

Last week, the system said it had temporarily closed 120 beds, mostly at its flagship Detroit hospital and in Jackson due to staffing shortages.

Henry Ford Health currently employs 7,000 registered nurses out of its 33,000 total employees.

Critics point to the health system's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all employees, which went into effect on Sept. 1, as a cause of is labor shortage. Riney said about 200 employees, not exclusively nurses, have resigned over the mandate.

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He declined to say how many workers are on suspension for not adhering to the mandate. Suspended unvaccinated employees have until Oct. 1 to get vaccinated before being effectively terminated from the system.

Henry Ford Health hopes to recruit the first 100-150 nurses from the Philippines in the next 12 months, though Riney said he hopes the recruiters can make that happen in nine months.

The system has twice previously recruited nurses from the Philippines in the 1980s and early 2000s, Riney said.

"Our experience in the past has been very positive," Riney said. "Their training is very similar to that of the U.S. They have a very strong nursing school education program. The nurses have assimilated to our health system very effectively."

The nurses are able to immigrate to the U.S. on a Schedule A green card, meaning once they enter the United States they are on a path to become a permanent citizen, instead of on a temporary visa, said Michael Nowlin, partner and immigration attorney for Clark Hill PLC in Detroit.

Green cards are possible because the U.S. Department of Labor designated nurses as being in a national shortage, which allows sponsoring employers to skip temporary visas for permanent resident green cards, Nowlin said.

Health systems typically choose to recruit nurses from the Philippines because of the country's longstanding relationship with the U.S. medical system since America colonized the country in 1898. After the Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers help establish a Westernized hospital system in the country, including nursing schools.

Since 1960, more than 150,000 nurses have migrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. In 2019, one out of 20 registered nurses in the U.S. was trained in the Philippines, Time reported last year.

Beaumont Health confirmed it is also actively recruiting nurses from overseas, but provided no details on from where.

"Beaumont, like most other major health systems, is pursuing any and all options to bring high-quality nurses into our system ... ," the Southfield-based health system said in a statement to Crain's. "Yes, some of the those nurses we are working to recruit currently reside in other countries."

Metro Detroit health systems have long enjoyed the benefits of recruiting nurses from Canada, who can enter the country on non-immigrant TN visas that were negotiated as part of the original North American Free Trade Agreement and now part of the United States Mexico Canada Agreement.

Riney said several of the nurses Henry Ford Health recruited from the Philippines in the 1980s have retired from the system in the past five years. The new cohort of nurses will receive housing assistance from Henry Ford Health as well.

The ongoing effort is part of Henry Ford's accelerated recruitment effort since the start of the pandemic, which has exacerbated longstanding labor shortages in the health care industry.

"We're doing whatever we can for recruitment," Riney said. "We have a significant number of nurses in orientation but the past 18 to 20 months of working with the pandemic has accelerated retirements. What's always been a challenge has been magnified over the next two years. And retirements are only going to accelerate over the next five years based on the age of our workforce. We're forecasting and making sure we can not only meet today's needs, but the future. So I'm looking forward to an accelerated (immigration) effort as much as possible."