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Northeast Florida hospitals are facing a shortage of the food service, cleaning and allied health workers needed to keep their facilities functioning.
There always have been "hot spots where there are more jobs than people qualified for them," said Kaye Lunsford, St. Vincent's director of human resources. "Several years ago there was a tremendous shortage of physical therapists. That doesn't exist today. Today we have a shortage in the radiology areas ultrusound, nuclear medicine technologies and radiology. That's a critical area. There just don't seem to be enough qualified and trained people."
To attract candidates, "companies are very aggressive about their hiring, competing with wages, sign-on bonuses, different strategies to draft and retain people," said Beth Mehaffey, director of human resources at Baptist Medical Center. "Retention bonuses - bonuses you have to stay on the job a certain length of time to qualify for - are something that I haven't seen until recently."
Mike Estes, chairman of human resources at...