Hospitals often don’t realize they’re losing ground in workforce development until the damage is already done. Staff leave, patients drift to competitors, and budgets absorb the impact months or even years later.
Todd Burch, president of PrognostiCare, sees those blind spots every day and believes predictive analytics can close them long before they erode quality, finances or morale. PrognostiCare, an AI-driven workforce and market intelligence platform, is helping to solve two of healthcare’s most stubborn problems visible in real time: employee turnover and patient leakage.
“We’re able to predict with a very high degree of accuracy when an employee is likely to leave an organization,” he said, making PrognostiCare a valuable tool for hospitals as turnover costs climb and labor shortages persist.
The cost of losing people
Staff turnover has long been expensive, but the true scale is often hidden. On average, hospitals spend $55,000 to $60,000 to replace a single employee; for nurses, the cost rises to $80,000 to $90,000, and for physicians it can reach seven figures. Beyond the financial hit, churn disrupts teams, delays onboarding, and degrades patient care.
A PrognostiCare Staff Retention case study illustrates just how quickly the problem compounds. An analysis of a 1,600-person hospital found:
- 44.5% of first-year turnover occurs in the first 90 days.
- 68% of first-year turnover occurs before six months.
- Only 2.5 out of every 10 new hires remain long enough to reach “Expert” proficiency at 36 months.
- Replacing the 1,665 employees who departed since 2021 cost the organization $90 million.
PrognostiCare surfaces these patterns early. Instead of blanket retention efforts, the platform flags the specific individuals and job classes most at risk and identifies why the risk is rising. In one example Mr. Burch noted, billing staff showed higher departure likelihood around 23 to 27 months, a period when they were finally reaching expertise, a costly time to lose them.
“Instead of broad retention programs, you can get really specific,” he said. “You can understand the interval when someone needs support and focus your efforts where they’ll matter most.”
Moneyball for healthcare hiring
Some of the most striking findings from the staff retention study relate to hiring. Much like when analytics entered the traditional world of baseball, having more data and numbers can support better training and decision-making by top leaders. But only if they’ve got good data and are willing to use it.
Drawing on the Moneyball analogy, PrognostiCare uses Net Promoter Score, risk domains, and behavioral patterns to distinguish strong long-term fits from candidates who are likely to leave quickly, which are differences too subtle for traditional hiring methods to catch.
Among the discoveries:
- 89.1% of early departures entered the organization with low NPS scores.
- 100% of detractors had three or more medium or high-risk indicators.
- Staff living more than 50 miles away were far less likely to stay.
The tool is not designed to screen out applicants but rather to guide decisions when candidates appear equivalent.
“If all things are equal, and one candidate has a 14% higher likelihood of staying, let’s hire the one who’s more likely to be with us long term,” he said.
The other silent threat: patient leakage
While turnover drains dollars from the inside, patient leakage quietly erodes revenue from the outside. Many organizations don’t realize it’s happening until claims data arrives, typically six to 12 months late.
PrognostiCare’s Market Access platform was built to close that gap. The technology tracks market share in real time, detecting when patients seek care elsewhere and why.
“We’ve been able to figure out how to track market share in terms of what was going on 20 minutes ago,” Mr. Burch said. “Your competition is waiting six more months for a report.”
Another recent PrognostiCare case study highlights the scale of the problem. A health system examined 12,626 patients who hadn’t returned to receive care in three years and found:
- 75% received care from competitors.
- 50.2% sought competitor care within 90 days.
- Leakage increased 197% over five years.
- Patients who experience a gap of one year are 98% less likely to return.
- Restoring lost volume would cost $3.5 million to $7.7 million in new patient acquisition annually.
- Margin erosion totaled 1.4% to 3.1% per year.
Perhaps most telling: the top competitor capturing these patients was perceived internally as a “friendly” partner, a reminder that hospitals often misunderstand who they are losing patients to and why.
The future
Taken together, the workforce and leakage insights create a fuller story about why hospitals struggle to stabilize their operations. Staff churn limits capacity and continuity; patient churn undermines revenue and long-term relationships. Neither problem is new but until now, both have been largely invisible as they develop.
Health system leaders need additional support. PrognostiCare is designed to replace gut instincts and retrospective reports with real-time analytics that leadership teams can act on immediately.
“We’re excited about not only what it is today, but what it is going to be in six to 12 months,” said Mr. Burch. “I think it’s going to be so much more advanced than even what we’re setting on today.”
For providers navigating labor shortages, competitive markets and tightened margins, acting quickly is critical.
“It’s a very interesting time to be able to help providers and health systems be able to know where their market share is going, and help to be able to retain the staff that they need in order to take care of patients,” said Mr. Burch.
