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North Coast Healthcare Costs Rising as Needs Grow · KMUD News

• 0:00
  Speaker A: A presentation from a local healthcare network manager included information on the north coast region's acute shortage of nurses and its rising costs of healthcare. Tina Shibley of the North Coast Health Improvement and Information Network discussed the concerning Trends during a March 11 online presentation to the Community Economic Resilience Consortium. As described here by Shibley, one of the primary issues affecting local health care is a shortage of nurses and licensed behavioral behavioral health specialists.
• 0:33
  Speaker B: And so right now in our Redwood region we currently need over a thousand nurses. So we are currently facing a thousand nurse shortage and if we project out to 2030 that disparity gets even larger. With a need of over 1400 nurses in the four county Redwood region area, behavioral health is another area where there are workforce gaps. You can see that Humboldt is a little bit better positioned than the rest of the state given the modeling that has been done by the Healthcare Access and Information Department here. The current need is 446 behavioral healthcare providers.
• 1:27
  Speaker A: Shibley also presented recent data on another
• 1:30
  Speaker B: troubling trend jumping to the cost of health care. I really wanted to highlight some information that I recently learned which is Based on a 2026 CHCF California health policy Survey and that is the cost of insurance year over year has outpaced economic indicators like wage growth or inflation. And their study found that 710 rural north respondents say that healthcare expenses have increased faster than their income and that's more than the average in California. In California it was about half of folks had reported that and then diving into covered California. There's been a lot of changes this last year or starting in 2026 due to the federal expiration of that enhanced premium tax credit.
• 2:28
  Speaker A: Without the federal tax credit, covered California premiums have increased from $399 per month per covered person to $727 per month per covered person on average, which Shibley described as a pretty significant increase in insurance costs. Noting that the consortium's focus is economic impact, Shibley added that market consolidation through hospital mergers is driving up the cost for consumers including small businesses and rural communities are more likely to experience larger than average price increases and often in outpatient settings. The outcome People pay more for insurance and health care services and there's lower take home pay for small businesses and working families. And with the adoption of HR1, the grandiosely titled Big Beautiful Bill, Medicaid coverage will be restricted by loss of funding, new requirements and cost sharing. The state has taken steps to address the issues and so have Humboldt counties,
• 3:38
  Speaker B: education institutions at the College of the Redwoods. They are expanding their registered nursing program to 100 slots in Humboldt and Del Norte. That's up from 64 slots last year. So pretty significant increase there, almost doubling their program. And as far as other ancillary healthcare providers, in the fall of 2026, they're going to launch their psychiatric technician program. And then in the fall of 2027, they're launching other tech programs in respiratory care, radiology and surgical. At Cal Poly Humboldt, they're really working on promoting their dual enrollment between the College of the Redwood RN program and their bachelor of nursing program. This fall they are also launching the community health, which is a public health degree program, and the health and medical Sciences which is a pre med. And those are two new bachelor's programs being offered at Cal Poly Humboldt to increase the pipeline of folks going into healthcare careers. And then an estimated go live date for their masters of nursing program is 2028.
• 4:54
  Speaker A: Cal Poly is also collaborating with College of the Redwoods on the state funded development of a health care education hub on 16th street in Arcata, with construction set for 2026-2027. During a question and answer session, Greg Foster of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission talked about the increasing complexity of healthcare services, prompting Shibley to note an abundance of bureaucratic red tape. When Foster asked, quote, how much of that red tape is leading to improvement in health care? Shibley replied, none. I think there is a study where they said 25% of the monies that go into health care are wasted. They don't result in improvements in access or health care outcomes. For KMUD News, this is Daniel Mintz.