2011 Salary Survey Results
Infection preventionists have both work success and job stress
Exploding responsibilities in a strong career field
Infection preventionists are keeping their heads above water in a brutal economy, though they may be understandably confused about which hat they have on them.
With rapidly expanding duties in the hospital and a wealth of consulting opportunities beyond, IPs have job security at a somewhat stressful price.
"I have the sense that folks are feeling a lot of concern about the data requirements and data management needs," says Russ Olmsted, MPH, CIC, 2011 president of the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). "Those have really escalated and that is going to continue with CMS and other demands for reporting. IPs are feeling pretty harried in trying to respond to all of these requests."
Indeed, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is becoming increasingly reluctant to reimburse hospitals for healthcare associated infections (HAIs) it considers preventable. All the while, individual states are demanding HAI data and consumers have the increasing expectation that infection rates are fully transparent. While that has ratcheted up the stress levels, IPs have responded with a powerful bottom-line result: rates of key HAIs are falling nationally. This success has positioned the profession as a "winner" in healthcare reform and economic discussions, but is that translating down to the individual program level?
Though perhaps not to the degree deserved, there are some good signs for IPs. For one, 65% of those responding to the annual HIC salary survey reported they received a raise in the last year. Not bad when one is working in a badly bruised economy, though it must be said that the vast majority of the wage hikes were of the modest variety. Overall 59% reported an increase of 1% to 3%, while 6% were compensated an additional 4% to 6%. Unfortunately, another 28% of IPs reported no raises and 7% suffered a pay cut.
Our 2011 survey found that that IPs were drawing a median salary in the $70,000 to $79,999 range. In salary percentage breakdowns, 10% were making $49,999 or less; 11% were paid $50,000 to $59,999; and 23% had salaries in the $60,000 to $60,999 range. Another 21% were drawing wages in the $70,000 to $70,999 range.
Calling all consultants
While hospital demands are on the rise, there is also a new frontier of consulting opportunities as state and federal regulators increasingly focus on infection prevention across the care continuum. The CMS is already targeting ambulatory care, and long term care is slated to be one of the next priorities for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) national "Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections." In addition, CMS has essentially fiscally empowered more facilities to take post-acute care patients. The vast majority of skilled nursing facilities nationwide now admit post-acute care patients, including many with well-established infection risk factors like the presence of central lines.
As a result of such trends, APIC's consulting service business tripled in size from 2010 to 2011.
"We have seen a fair uptick in the amount of APIC consulting," Olmsted says. "Some of that is data validation for state-based requirements for reporting. We have folks who are trained to go into the hospitals and make sure the measurements are accurate."
In any case, there is likely to be a continuing demand for infection prevention services in the hospital and beyond, as HAIs remain a high federal priority.
"When you look at the tiers of the HHS action plan, clearly dialysis facilities and ambulatory surgery will have increased needs of resources in terms of education and training for infection prevention," Olmsted says. "To me, it looks very positive in terms of the growth opportunities, not only in acute care but across the network of care."
There has been concern that there may not be sufficient numbers of IPs to meet such demands, particularly due to longstanding projections of a national nursing shortage. However, a recently published study found that economic conditions and other factors are making nursing a growth career. On the heels of shortages in the 1980s and 1990s, the authors reported that "between 2002 and 2009 ... the number of full-time-equivalent registered nurses ages 23–26 increased by 62%. If these young nurses follow the same life-cycle employment patterns as those who preceded them—as they appear to be thus far — then they will be the largest cohort of registered nurses ever observed."1
"There seem to be new students entering the field of nursing to meet that significant need," Olmsted says. "Typically the majority of APIC members have nursing backgrounds — somewhere around 85%. But most of the new nurses who enter the field will go into clinical areas first for career development for say, one to five years. So even though we do have a good influx of nurses entering the work force, relatively few of those are going to go immediately into infection prevention. They will go into direct staff nursing and gain experience doing patient care."
There will be plenty of "second-career" IP jobs waiting for them, as nearly half of the respondents to the HIC survey were at least 56 years old. Indeed, job security is virtually a given. While the national unemployment rate hovered at 9% in the fall of 2011, the unemployment rate for registered nurses was just above 3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Health care overall will add more jobs between 2008 and 2018 than any other industry, and wages are projected to rise by 22% in that timeframe – twice as fast as the national average, BLS says.
Reference
- Auerbach DI, Buerhaus PI, Staiger DO. Registered nurse supply grows faster than projected amid surge in new entrants Ages 23–26. Health Affairs 2011; 30:2286-2292.
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