 - The Wyoming Life Resource Center in Lander is currently operating at less than half its capacity, largely due to staffing issues that continue to impact all state-run health care facilities in Wyoming, a legislative task force heard last month.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – The Wyoming Life Resource Center in Lander is currently operating at less than half its capacity, largely due to staffing issues that continue to impact all state-run health care facilities in Wyoming, a legislative task force heard last month.
The WLRC campus offers a total of 100 beds for patients, and only 48 of those are currently filled – including 35 in the Intermediate Care Facility and 13 in the Skilled Nursing Facility, Wyoming Department of Health Director Stefan Johansson told the Wyoming Legislature’s Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force during a meeting last month.
“Currently our census is about half,” Johansson said. “And that’s primarily due (to) staffing.”
All of Wyoming’s state-run health care facilities are facing “significant” staffing issues right now, Johansson noted, but the problem is “really acutely felt” at facilities like the WLRC for “a variety of reasons, including the direct care labor market, and also just the type of facilities that these are and the populations they serve.”
“They’re challenging places to work, (with) challenging populations to serve,” Johansson explained. “So recruitment and retention is an ongoing battle – (as) it is in the health and human service industry more broadly in Wyoming – just to find adequate staffing levels to provide that care.”
Contract labor
According to Johansson’s presentation, as of May 2025, there were 143 Certified Nursing Assistant vacancies at the WLRC – 67 percent of the total 215 positions available.
For Licensed Practical Nurses and Registered Nurses, the presentation showed that there were seven vacancies at the WLRC as of May – 29 percent of the 24 total positions available.
To accommodate the staffing shortages at the WLRC and other state-run health care facilities, Johansson said the WDH could simply reduce the number of beds available for patients – but that would lead to longer wait times, causing “upstream and downstream” backlogs for the legal system, local emergency departments, and other “very important state safety net systems.”
Instead, Johansson said the WDH has started to hire more contract labor in recent years to help “maintain a certain level of bed capacity” at its state-run facilities.
“(That’s) something we do very reluctantly,” he noted. “This is not something we want to do. But … we also want to maintain as much bed capacity as we can.”
Statewide, total contract labor costs at the WDH have grown from about $2.6 million in 2022 to a projected $16.8 million in 2025, according to Johansson’s presentation.
For the WLRC, the presentation says contract labor costs have grown from $140,000 in 2022 to a projected $3.7 million in 2025.
The contract labor is paid for using “vacancy savings from those positions that we struggle to recruit,” Johansson noted.
But the recruitment struggle only becomes worse as more contract labor is hired, he added – because those contract workers tend to be paid more than state employees.
“It really is a challenge,” Johansson said. “You have a CNA or a nurse (in a) state position, literally working next to a CNA or nurse that’s doing a very similar – if not the exact same – job, potentially making two or even three times the salary.”
The WDH pays its entry level nurses up to $33 per hour, he said, while staffing agencies charge $70-90 per hour for contract nurses, who likely receive $40-60 per hour out of that total.
“It is significant,” Johansson said. “The more we are reliant on contract labor, the more difficult it becomes to recruit those (state) positions.”
The WDH also competes with local labor markets, he noted, pointing out that, while the state pays entry level CNA’s about $18 per hour, someone with the same skill level could make $20 per hour in Lander working at a job that’s outside of the health and human services industry.
“The state facilities are being out-competed,” Johansson said.
‘Non-salary’ benefits
In order to make the state employment option more attractive while still maintaining wage “equity” across all departments, Johansson said the WDH has been “experimenting” with “non-salary” benefit options for its health care employees – like paid “educational leave” for CNA’s working to become LPN’s or RN’s.
“We will pay them their 40 hour a week salary, work them 20, (and) the remaining 20 is to go to school,” Johansson explained. “It’s kind of a no-cost option, if you can staff it, to provide educational leave while someone gets a higher certification to potentially take one of these nursing positions we have.”
The tactic has been “very, very successful” so far at the Wyoming State Hospital, Johansson said – and the program has since been enhanced to include a “limited tuition reimbursement” for “very targeted positions.”
“I’m optimistic about that,” Johansson said. “We’re starting to see the early signs that that could be a very meaningful way to improve this recruitment and retention (situation) at the hospital. So kudos to the team – especially the nursing team and director of nursing at the hospital – for working with the resources we have to try to improve some of these challenges.”