Due to the good conditions for nurses, the Hesse Clinic Association believes that more and more permanent hospital staff could switch to temporary work.

"I already see the danger that there could be a relatively large emigration of staff from the hospitals if you don't take action now," said Reinhard Schaffert, managing director of the Hessen Clinic Association based in Wetzlar.

Hospitals face problems with attractive conditions for temporary workers.

The temporary workers help clinics with failures and bottlenecks, but they also cause high costs.

Even before the corona pandemic, Schaffert estimated the additional costs due to temporary work at a hospital with around 300 beds at several hundred thousand euros per year.

During the pandemic, the order of magnitude “certainly has not decreased”.

Temporary workers are hired out by temporary employment agencies to other companies for a limited period of time.

In the care industry, they are mostly used when there is a shortage of staff, for example during a flu wave.

According to industry representatives, temporary workers in care are often paid well above the collective bargaining agreement.

One of the reasons for this is the shortage of skilled workers in the industry.

According to the Federal Employment Agency, 2.1 percent of those employed in health and nursing care in Hesse were temporary workers in December 2020.