COVID-19 exposed many cracks in the healthcare system. One area where those cracks were a particular problem was in how hospitals and long-term care facilities approached staffing.
During an August Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by SnapNurse, Jeff Richards, CEO of SnapNurse, discussed the changing nature of healthcare staffing and how technology-enabled platforms can bring legacy and new staffing models under one roof.
Four key takeaways were:
- Sourcing new staff and quickly onboarding them are major challenges. To help with their staffing needs, most hospitals rely on managed service providers and vendor management systems that were not designed for rapid onboarding. As a result, extraordinary situations such as the pandemic and the ongoing provider shortages tested the limits of those systems and are failing to meet organizations' dynamic staffing needs.
"The software programs that are used to manage orders for supplemental staff are based on outdated technology that was not built for speed and ease of use," Mr. Richards said. He added that the crisis caused by COVID opened the door to a new way of thinking about healthcare staffing and about the role of supplemental staffing agencies such as SnapNurse. - The future of healthcare staffing is about partnership rather than a client-vendor relationship. Central to this partnership is the use of technology that facilitates how nurses and other providers are onboarded into hospitals and long-term care facilities and are offered shifts that match their degree, specialty and competency by acuity. "That matching algorithm between the clinicians and open jobs or shifts, done in a tech-enabled and expedited fashion, facilitates the labor market for both sides," Mr. Richards said.
- Ultimately, providers want to decrease their dependency on costly supplemental staffing. As COVID raged on, staff suffered massive burnout and many people transitioned into travel or contract arrangements, which they often found to be less demanding and more rewarding. "Clinicians want to pick up shifts in a less stressful care environment and seek out short-term contract assignments [because it] gives them flexibility and a level of control over their schedule," Mr. Richards said.
Yet, these labor market dynamics imply increased costs to facilities because contracting clinicians on demand comes at a significant cost premium. This is why organizations are seeking partnerships that go beyond sourcing and onboarding to include the management of an internal float pool, with the goal of reducing external staffing agency spend while increasing clinician satisfaction. - Technology solutions that coordinate internal, external and float staffing into a single platform will win out. Platforms such as SnapNurse, which can accommodate different staffing modalities, including full- and part-time employees, are inherently better than hybrid systems that require healthcare facilities to adopt multiple software programs, depending on the provenance of their workforce.
However, technology-enabled platforms that prioritize technology over customer service, accountability and consideration for the specialists they match with organizations — which Mr. Richards said characterizes many new entrants in the space — do not necessarily ensure a superior experience. This is due to the special nature of healthcare and the intensely human aspect of clinical care, both for patients and the clinicians who provide that care. "You have to combine [staffing] with customer service and the clinical acumen to be able to back up anybody who's in the field for you," Mr. Richards concluded.
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