The healthcare industry has seen a dramatic rise in use-specific platforms and applications for practice and facility management. Electronic health records, automated billing platforms, and patient information portals have streamlined everything from scheduling follow-up appointments to getting insurance authorizations. These new tools harness machine learning and predictive analytics to optimize perennial challenges like workforce management.
Administrative technology solutions like human resource management tools are vital for ensuring facilities have adequate numbers of highly qualified staff working every shift. Workforce solution platforms can simplify the process of hiring per diem or travel nurses and other allied health professionals.
Moving Beyond Staffing Agencies
Hospitals, long-term care facilities, and surgical centers have often relied on an extended workforce of per diem nurses and allied health professionals to fill coverage gaps. In the past, administrators or nurse managers would work with staffing agencies for workforce management. The process was often time-consuming, with facility staff dedicating valuable hours to making calls and waiting for agencies to get back to them with an answer.
Working with staffing agencies would eventually deliver needed staff but the process lacked efficiency and affected care delivery. Workforce management platforms that offer direct communication between hiring facilities and healthcare professionals speed up the hiring process to reduce staffing shortages quickly and effectively.
Improving Patient Care
The Journal of Advanced Nursing reports that during shifts where fewer nurses are available, as many as 75% of nurses end up omitting care. Nursing staff acknowledge that they struggle to keep up in the face of understaffing. Research has shown low staffing levels result in missed care and reduced communication with patients and their families. That, in turn, leaves patients with negative feelings about their experience in the facility.
To combat this, facilities are adopting workforce management solutions that allow available professionals to respond to open assignments immediately filling shifts as soon as possible. The ability to bring qualified healthcare workers in on short notice improves both patient care and patient experience.
Reducing Administrative Burdens
Extended workforce platforms like Medely provide a better way to address workforce management. Instead of initiating a series of phone calls to every member of their float pool or waiting by the phone for an agency representative to call back, facility managers can post shifts to Medely’s Talent Marketplace when they need them and be connected with qualified nurses and allied health professionals in the area.
Healthcare facilities can save time by eliminating the need to submit staffing requests through other departments. Administrative staff can manage staffing across the facility with a single dashboard, enabling them to track requests and confirm when per-diem professionals are on-site.
Medely also streamlines the payment process for on-demand staff, ensuring they are paid accurately and on time. Per-diem staff submit their timesheets directly through the platform, allowing facility managers to review them as soon as they’re posted. There’s no need for internal timesheets, and no risk of temporary staff forgetting to file the necessary paperwork. The platform automatically calculates all shifts and sends a weekly billing report to the facility’s business account. This reporting enables facility managers to monitor staffing costs on a weekly basis and adjust budgets as needed.
Supporting Full-Time Staff
Workforce management platforms provide managers with access to a vast pool of qualified professionals to meet their extended workforce needs. These platforms also allow managers to reach out to specialists with tailored opportunities. Additionally, managers and schedulers can create a list of “favorites” — professionals who have strong working relationships with providers or possess specific skills that are critical for facility operations. Managers can then send job postings directly to these selected nurses or allied health professionals for consideration.
Facilities gain access to a strong pool of float staff who can step in during periods of high demand. The ability to quickly add personnel to the schedule offers an alternative to relying on overtime for in-house staff. Allowing permanent employees to decline extra hours helps maintain work-life balance and lowers the risk of nurse burnout. Reducing overtime shifts also cuts costs by bringing in additional staff without the expense of premium overtime pay.
Driving Revenue
In addition to cost savings from increased efficiency, strategic workforce planning can boost revenue. Managers can build a specialized float pool that ensures adequate coverage for high-demand, high-revenue departments such as emergency care or surgery. Extended workforce platforms allow managers to target flexible staffing to particular departments to ensure that those departments can always work at top capacity.
Managers can bring in specialized nurses or allied health professionals with the necessary skills rather than pulling staff from other departments to fill in outside their areas of specialty. Maximizing staffing for high-volume services can ensure that patients have consistent access to needed care while also providing steady revenue to the facility.
Extended Workforce Management with Medely
Medely is a technology solution that offers a direct connection between healthcare facilities, nurses, and allied health professionals. With just a few clicks, healthcare managers can post staffing needs directly to healthcare professionals they need for per diem, local, and travel assignments.
Medely’s talent marketplace includes over 300,000 nurses and health professionals across the country. Professionals are all verified and background checked so managers can be certain they are hiring qualified staff.
Posting a staffing request is as simple as filling in the job details and hitting submit. The shift will be sent out to credentialed nurses and health professionals in your area, or you can limit the post to professionals on your favorites list to give first access to people who have worked in your organization before. 93% of the shifts posted to Medely are filled, usually within two hours of posting them. To get started with Medely, sign up for a free account. You can also contact us to learn more about how Medely can support your healthcare staffing needs.
