To stem instability, Alta Vista hospital is cultivating local pipeline of nurses
Oct. 17—LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Nurse Marisol Pacheco has only been on the job at Alta Vista Regional Hospital a couple of months, but she's already getting used to a little interrogation.
"It's a small community," Pacheco said. "So of course, we see many people ... asking, 'Where are you from? Are you from here? Who are you related to?' "
Pacheco is about as local as they come; born and raised in Mora, the 21-year-old registered nurse is also a welder who considered taking over her father's welding business. She opted for a nursing career, though, and in May finished her two-year program at Luna Community College.
Her decision to take a job in the medical-surgical unit across town is a victory for Alta Vista, which is working closely with the community college to recruit nurses who, like Pacheco, are happy to be in Las Vegas, who don't plan to leave after a few months and, whenever possible, who have roots in the community.
The partnership is a two-way street: Alta Vista provides a place for nursing students to get hands-on training needed for their education while also scoping out potential talent, said Leah Joslin, the hospital's chief nursing officer and a clinical instructor at Luna Community College.
"We get to kind of recruit from the beginning and work at ... keeping local nurses local," Joslin said.
As with so many hospitals and clinics around the state, Alta Vista has struggled for years to keep staffing levels up. Leaders have pointed to vacancies as one driver of the organization's instability in recent years, including the 2022 closure of the labor and delivery unit.
The hospital isn't alone, of course; New Mexico has a massive shortage of registered nurses. A report published last year by the New Mexico Health Care Workforce Committee noted more than 6,500 registered nurse positions were being posted online monthly.
In 2022, Alta Vista's owners at the time, Tennessee-based Quorum Health, were sued by then-Attorney General Hector Balderas, whose office alleged the facility was advertising services it couldn't provide and maintaining substandard conditions. That lawsuit was settled last year, shortly before the hospital changed hands.
Today, Alta Vista is owned by Tennessee-based Dava Health Inc. and managed by Java Medical Group.
Amanda Shurtz, Alta Vista's interim CEO, told The New Mexican earlier this year one priority for bringing stability back to the hospital would be recruiting enough nurses to phase out the use of "travelers," or temporary medical staff who help fill staffing gaps but at a much higher cost than actual employees.
The hospital had 27 travelers working last summer, including registered nurses, surgical scrub nurses, medical laboratory technicians and respiratory therapists, according to Shurtz. As of Monday, Joslin said, that number is down to just four.
While Shurtz hoped the hospital would be traveler free by the end of September, she said she's proud of the progress.
"It took a considerable effort," Shurtz said in an interview last week. "It's a good stewardship thing."
The new hires include Pacheco, as well as three other new registered nurses, from the Luna program, who were also brought on in recent months.
Maxine Hughes, the college's academic director of nursing, said the hospital has also supported the school by giving Joslin and one other Alta Vista employee flexibility to come work with students, which helps since Luna is also low on faculty.
"They're supporting us by allowing students [to] come in and have experiences at their facility and get to know them, and they're building a relationship with the school so that students feel comfortable and see the need in their community for them to be working there," Hughes said.
Pacheco, meanwhile, said she's getting the kind of training she wanted. She's living in Las Vegas now, and engaged to a fellow nurse whom she met in the program. She's enrolled in a Bachelor of Science in nursing at New Mexico Highlands University and said the couple would at some point like to try out travel nursing themselves — those high costs for the hospitals translate to big bucks for nurses willing to embrace the lifestyle.
Even further down the road, Pacheco said, she might like to work in a medical spa and help with aesthetic treatments.
For now, though, Pacheco said she's glad to be where she is.
"I really wanted to be able to help bring this hospital back up and ... to have something for our community where they can come and feel safe and trusted and know that they're going to be taken care of," she said.
