Becker's Healthcare January 2, 2026
Cottage Hospital, a 35-bed critical access hospital in Woodsville, N.H., reduced its use of travel staff by 70% in 2025 — a shift driven by workforce investments that focused on stabilizing staffing and reducing costs.
Like many rural hospitals, Cottage struggled with rising labor costs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. By April 2024, the hospital hit an all-time high in contract labor — even exceeding its pandemic peak.
“We had tried several different things trying to figure out how to turn that around, and we were just unsuccessful at it,” Holly McCormack, DNP, RN, president and CEO of Cottage Hospital, said in a December interview on the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast. “We were at the point where we had the...
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