“Staffing is tough for everyone involved,” Greg Paulus, founder of WonWay Health and healthcare workforce strategy leader, shared during Medely’s most recent conversation with healthcare leaders across the country. 

Modern-day healthcare staffing complexities aren’t going anywhere. In fact, as more regulations are put in place, shortages increase, and patient demand fluctuates, a strong staffing strategy is critical to keeping healthcare facilities afloat.

During the conversation, Greg posed these questions to about 30 healthcare leaders from top facilities nationwide: 

  • How do we move from reacting to anticipating?
  • Where can AI genuinely help, and where do we still need human judgment involved? 
  • How do we design a workforce model that people actually want to stay in? 

Here’s what came out of it. 

How do we move from reacting to anticipating?

Labor has always been the largest investment for health systems, but what has changed in staffing is the volatility of labor. 

Most healthcare leaders already have the signals to identify a callout; the hard part is connecting them early enough to act before staffing shortages compound. 

The missing component most leaders don’t know is that the lead-up to shortages often starts weeks prior to the actual callout. If someone calls out on a Monday, and the shift isn’t filled, there’s a chain of events that took place to get to that point. 

Patient demand increased unexpectedly. Staff had planned time off or couldn’t pick up an extra shift because they needed time to recover. The floor was already short 2-3 nurses. 

While the callout can’t be predicted, if the events leading up to it had been addressed intentionally, there could have been a plan of action in place by Monday morning when the callout occurred, rather than a frenzy to fill the shift. 

Many of the healthcare leaders agreed this frenzy was their normal when a callout happened. Even with a dedicated staffing office, charge nurse, or department manager responsible for filling the shift, the general consensus was that filling a last-minute shift took luck and tedious manual processes that slowed everything down.

The leaders recognized the inefficiencies, though. When reframing staffing through a more proactive lens, one leader shared that in an ideal world, all staffing would be centralized in one location for maximum efficiency. “How can we systematically get that message out so that we don’t always have to go to the incentive to get people in, or pray that we get someone in?”

Where can AI genuinely help, and where do we still need human judgment involved? 

Most leaders shared they’re utilizing AI for some portion of the staffing process, whether that’s predictive staffing, scheduling, forecasting patient volumes, or speeding up the hiring process.  

While AI has found its place in many leaders’ arsenal of tools, most shared that they’re still facing a complicated balancing act between implementing AI and leaving room for human expertise. 

AI is useful for speeding up strenuous, repetitive tasks, but one point that came up in our conversation was the need to handle AI implementation with care. The goal isn’t to replace the human touch; it’s to reduce administrative burden so administrators can take on larger, more complicated tasks. 

One leader shared that even as they utilize AI for more tasks, at the root of their practice, they still maintain a “deep commitment to have humans in the loop running the daily operations.” 

AI isn’t a replacement for the healthcare practitioners who run the facility; it’s a tool that helps “superpower our people who are the best at doing the work.”

When using AI to solve staffing problems, Greg’s insights resonated with most leaders on the call. “AI is really good at helping the leaders see sooner and choose better. It doesn’t replace the judgment or fix a broken model.”

When implementing AI systems, ask yourself these questions to get a better understanding of where to prioritize finding technology solutions: 

  • What tasks have I spent the most time on over the past week? 
  • Where am I still using manual systems that block quick turnarounds? 
  • What processes take more than a few steps to complete?
  • If I compared this process to the same process 20 years ago, would there be any difference, even though I have more tools available? 

How do we design a workforce model that people actually want to stay in? 

The final question Greg posed to leaders was around the ever-present challenge of turnover and reducing staff burnout. “Sustainable capacity doesn’t come from pushing harder,” Greg shared. “It comes from designing a better model. We plan patient demand with incredible vigor. What if we put that same energy into designing schedules people can actually live with?”

This question kickstarted a discussion about what leaders see as the most important issue to their staff. 

The number one resounding answer? 

Flexibility. 

Flexibility has been the number one staffing buzzword since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Gen-Z and Millennial healthcare professionals take the place of their more seasoned counterparts, new demands are emerging. 

“Flexibility is the new currency,” one healthcare leader shared. “The younger generation wants to work to live, not live to work, and they want it to be around their schedule and what they want to do… We really have to step up and create that environment that invites people to stay and makes it what they need it to be. And it’s different for each person.”

While it’s one of the most important factors, it’s also one of the most challenging to deliver on. 

“We have a certain need to take care of everyone, and flexible schedules can sometimes be a challenge,” another leader shared. “Flexibility sometimes means something different to different people. Sometimes people want it in their schedule, but I have people who are cross-trained between three or four different specialties, and they like the flexibility of being able to jump between specialties and not being tied to one. So if they get burnout in the ED, they can go over.”

To keep up with these varied flexibility needs, leaders are implementing a staffing model that can bend with demand. 

“Flexibility works when it’s built into the model, and you can get ahead of some of these issues,” Greg shared. “But there’s a lot of complexity building that into the model as well, which is the other side of the coin.”

This leads to the importance of a technology-based staffing model that can: 

  • Predict staffing shortages 
  • Sense burnout before it occurs 
  • Read past data and share recommendations for the future 
  • Understand current staffing trends and how to maintain efficiency  

When healthcare leaders are in the know about what’s happening, they can build in the flexibility that creates staying power. 

“Workforce strategy isn’t filling holes faster,” Greg shared as he wrapped up the conversation. “It’s better visibility, better options, and enough time to make thoughtful decisions.”

Learn how Allied Digestive Health utilized Medely’s Core feature to automate scheduling and cut scheduling time by 66%.

Read Greg’s insights here.