Two state agencies will ask the legislative emergency board for nearly $40 million to help ease what they describe as a staffing and financial catastrophe that’s left hundreds of patients in limbo.

Officials from the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Human Services hope the money will address what they are calling the post-pandemic health care crisis. A full-blown exodus of nurses and others out of the healthcare field has blown a hole in hospitals’ financial models.

Oregon hospitals collectively lost $190 million in the first quarter of this year. They don’t expect the second quarter, completed at the end of June, to be better.

Nurses say they are leaving the field because they’re tired of the risks posed by COVID-19, the danger posed by erratic patients and the constant demands by management to do more with less.

The staff shortages are a double whammy for hospitals and nursing homes. They must replace the departed nurses with temporary help that costs much more.

Plus, they don’t have enough staff to handle the patients. Emergency room patients can wait days before a bed opens up, which clogs the whole system.

But it gets worse when nursing homes and skilled nursing centers refuse to take patients ready to be discharged from the hospital because they too lack the staff to care for additional residents.

An estimated 600 patients in Oregon are currently in this health care limbo. They are generating little if any revenue for the hospitals and they’re taking up a bed that normally would be allocated to a new patient with immediate medical needs.

The Department of Human Services is seeking $25.7 million from the state general fund and $2.6 million in other monies. The money would pay for “incentives” to long-term care facilities to accept those stuck hospital patients.

The additional funds would pay for nurse crisis teams to help nursing homes hit hardest by the staff shortage. It would generate new higher reimbursement for adult foster homes that accept some of these patients. And it would create a provider relief fund to save nursing homes and other facilities facing insolvency.

The Oregon Health Authority is seeking $9.6 million in general fund money and $2 million in other funds. Most of it would go for short-term nursing staff support – about 50 in all – for hospitals.

The emergency board considers funding requests from agencies outside of regular legislative sessions. It is unclear when it will consider these requests.

Hospitals and health systems all over Oregon are suffering big financial losses. They approached state officials asking for help, which they also did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We asked the state for help to take pressure off the system, especially when it comes to discharging some patients and transferring others to more appropriate levels of care,” said Becky Hultberg, president and CEO of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and HealthCare Systems. “Today the state made the commitment to help, and we are grateful.”