Maintaining high nursing quality standards is more critical than ever. With fluctuating patient volumes and workforce shortages, many healthcare organizations are adopting a mixed workforce model that combines permanent staff with contingent workers, such as travel nurses and per diem staff. This approach provides flexibility and helps meet workforce demands, but it also requires deliberate strategies to uphold quality care standards.
The Power of a Mixed Workforce
Medely’s technology unifies your extended workforce by integrating internal resources, per diem, credentialing, and vendor management into a single solution. At Medely, we believe that maintaining nursing quality standards requires a balanced approach that combines the stability of permanent staff with the flexibility of per-diem professionals.
A mixed workforce doesn’t mean sacrificing quality for flexibility. In fact, by streamlining the integration of permanent and contingent staff, facilities can achieve better outcomes for both patients and employees. This mixed workforce model allows facilities to adapt to fluctuating demands while ensuring consistent care delivery. By integrating permanent and contingent resources through our Talent Marketplace and Talent Fusion solutions, we’re enabling facilities to meet immediate staffing needs without compromising long-term goals. While facilities can hire more full-time staff to fill gaps, with fluctuating demand, it’s more cost effective to utilize an extended workforce.
Medely provides the tools needed to credential, manage, and deploy healthcare professionals seamlessly, ensuring that every team member—whether permanent or contingent—meets the same high standards of care.
Understanding the Challenges of a Mixed Workforce
A mixed workforce offers many advantages, including the ability to scale staffing levels and bring in specialized expertise. However, it also presents unique challenges:
- Consistency in Care: Ensuring consistent patient care can be difficult when contingent workers rotate frequently.
- Integration: Temporary staff need to be quickly oriented and integrated into existing teams and workflows.
- Compliance and Training: Maintaining compliance with healthcare regulations and providing training for per-diem workers can be resource-intensive.
Strategies to Maintain Quality Standards
To successfully leverage a mixed workforce while maintaining nursing quality standards, healthcare organizations should focus on the following strategies:
- Standardized Onboarding: Create a comprehensive onboarding process tailored to contingent workers. This should include training on facility protocols, electronic health record (EHR) systems, and patient care standards. A well-structured onboarding program ensures that temporary staff are equipped to deliver high-quality care from day one.
- Credentialing: All Medely professionals must submit up-to-date credentials, which are then reviewed by our team. This reduces verification times, and minimizes compliance risks by ensuring that contingent workers meet all necessary qualifications and standards before they begin work. Additionally, facilities can leverage Medely’s credentialing solution to manage credentialing for their internal staff to create a consistent baseline for quality care and safety – ensuring compliance across all staff.
- Performance Monitoring: Monitor the performance of both permanent and contingent staff. Use metrics like patient satisfaction scores, clinical outcomes, and adherence to protocols to identify areas for improvement. Medely regularly collects facility feedback on professionals to monitor success
- Utilizing Favorites: A standout offering for customers, the “Favorites” feature lets facilities choose contingent staff they enjoy working with and offer them priority for new assignments. This fosters consistency by allowing physicians to collaborate with the same staff repeatedly, ensuring continuity of care.
Real Stories, Real Impact
As the Chief Nursing Officer at Medely, I have seen firsthand how strategic workforce management can profoundly impact the quality of care delivered to patients. For example, a surgery center in Pennsylvania has effectively utilized Medely’s “favorites” feature to ensure their contingent workforce feels like an extension of their permanent team.
The administrator shared, “With Medely, we now pretty much have the same people rotating through, so it feels like an extension of our in-house labor pool. We always offer our assignments to our favorites first to get the same ones.”
Experiences like this highlight the transformative power of Medely’s approach. By connecting facilities with qualified professionals in real-time, we’re not just filling shifts—we’re creating sustainable solutions that enhance operational efficiency for facilities and empower healthcare workers.
Driving Excellence in a Mixed Workforce
A mixed permanent and contingent workforce can be a powerful solution for addressing workforce challenges in healthcare. By implementing strategic practices and fostering a collaborative environment, healthcare organizations can maintain nursing quality standards while benefiting from the flexibility and expertise of a diverse team. Ultimately, prioritizing quality and consistency in care will lead to better patient outcomes and a stronger workforce overall.
Learn more about how to optimize your mixed workforce. Sign up for your free Medely account here!