Q: Congress has begun to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the new administration says that’s a high priority. How will this affect the healthcare industry and AMN Healthcare this year?
A: Regardless of the political dialogue, there are far more important macro-forces that are driving demand for healthcare delivery, demand for practitioners, and demand for our company’s services. These drivers will not only continue but actually increase:
• Our aging population will need more healthcare. People who are 65+ use three times more healthcare than the general public. People 75+ use four times as much.
• Our clinical workforce is getting older, and more practitioners are retiring or going to part-time.
• The improving economy means more people have jobs with health insurance and money for copays and deductibles.
• Shortages exist across the board and across the country for nurses, physicians and allied health professionals in virtually all specialties. The gap of unfilled healthcare jobs is huge.
• Healthcare industry consolidation is creating large, sophisticated companies that need top quality practitioners with the skills to succeed in the new healthcare environment.
• This super-competitive talent acquisition environment is itself magnifying the demand for quality healthcare practitioners.
These are long-range trends. For example, our population will continue aging at least through 2060, when there will be about twice as many people over 65 compared to today. In the intervening decades, there will be many changes to healthcare policy. But the demand for healthcare services due to aging will grow constantly. The AMN Healthcare business model is based on these types of long-range drivers of demand, and the continued changes in healthcare provides AMN an opportunity to further differentiate ourselves by expanding our suite of Workforce Solutions and technology solutions.
Q. Workforce supply ups and downs are part of the healthcare industry landscape. Do you see the current shortages continuing?
A: Shortages have occurred in the past, but today’s shortages have turned chronic and are approaching a crisis. And they are getting worse with no sign significant improvement, though there will be fluctuations in this worsening trend.
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that there’s a widening gap in unfilled healthcare jobs. That gap hovered around a half-million open jobs for much of 2016. This is the widest gap that we’ve ever seen as long as the BLS has been tracking these statistics, and it’s been going up very steadily since the recession.
• We do not see these trends changing significantly. And even if there were some narrowing of this unfilled jobs gap, it wouldn’t change the basic problem – too much demand and not enough supply. But this is not a simply economics equation that will be fixed with pricing or fabrication of more supply. In this case, trained professionals (people with skills and choices) are the supply and you can’t just make them in a factory.
• This gap leads to widespread frustration among healthcare providers who can’t fill their permanent jobs. And they have increasing problems keeping the clinicians they have because demand is so strong. Attrition is at historically high levels for most every clinical discipline and for leaders within healthcare.
• Healthcare organizations need expert help in talent acquisition and workforce optimization so they can maintain their focus on quality patient care and compete successfully in this transformative era for the industry.
Q: What does the changing demographic make-up of the workforce mean for the healthcare industry?
A: A dramatic transformation is well underway in nursing and the rest of the healthcare workforce due to a generational change, including the retirement of Baby Boomers and the entrance of Millennials. Work preferences are changing for nearly all generations. This is coupled with new and emerging clinical roles, again particularly for nurses. Some of the changes and their impacts will be:
• Aging Baby Boomer nurses are beginning to retire or move to part-time work in large numbers, according to our biennial RN survey, and are being replaced by Millennials.
• Healthcare is a natural profession for Millennials, because helping people is very important to them. But work-life balance, preference for working fewer hours, greater flexibility and frequent changes in their environment also are important to them, more so than to earlier generations. Oh yes, and fast and frequent promotions are expected. For healthcare providers, this could improve employee engagement but exacerbate productivity and shortages.
• Early career nurses and other healthcare professionals won’t yet have the bedside, specialty or organizational culture experience as those they are replacing. So healthcare providers are going to need help from experts in finding, preparing, managing and planning for the integration and engagement of the new generation of workers.
• As our population ages, treatments and diagnostics advance, and the healthcare industry becomes more sophisticated, the roles of nurses and other professionals becomes more complex. The new generation of healthcare workers faces an environment that will be more challenging, so there will be greater need for education and training to prepare them.
Q: How important is the changing role of executive leadership in healthcare?
A: The healthcare industry has become highly competitive and much more sophisticated, making organizational leadership more important than ever. Vacancies in clinical and administrative executive positions can be damaging to quality, competitiveness and strategy. Interim and permanent executive search and placement to fill vacancies quickly with the right people are vital to success. Challenges to finding quality leaders include:
• A widening gap of experienced leaders due to Baby Boomer retirements and turnover
• An increasingly complex and competitive environment is thinning leadership ranks. Healthcare leaders today and in the future must cope with new care models and reimbursement formulas and excel in an increasingly competitive environment while improving care quality and patient satisfaction.
• A lack of or minimal succession planning and development for future leaders
• The growing challenge of finding quality candidates for executive vacancies due to rising salaries, candidate shortages, expanded expectations, and difficulties in matching candidates to organizational culture
• Greater need for diversity in leadership candidates, particularly considering the rising role of women and people of color in healthcare and leadership in general
Q: How does innovation help solve critical challenges in workforce supply while supporting improved patient experience?
A: Traditional staffing practices are not enough to solve the increasingly complex workforce problems facing the industry. At the same time, industry economics are transforming quickly from volume of care to quality of care, so patient experience is vitally important. Innovation in solving these challenges is imperative now.
• Healthcare providers must evolve in anticipation of changes or get left behind. The industry must utilize its workforce more effectively to maintain and enhance quality while also improving efficiency.
• AMN Healthcare offers a formula for success in our industry’s changing environment that includes Strategy + Staffing + Optimization so healthcare organizations can maximize their entire contingent and permanent workforce.
• Strategy includes using predictive analytics to accurately forecast future patient demand and staffing need through data collection, algorithms and computer modeling.
• With that information, healthcare organizations can apply technology-enhanced staffing solutions to deliver candidates
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker’s Hospital Review/Becker’s Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
