Key Takeaways: Hospitals struggle to cover multiple departments because of limited visibility into contingent labor, varied role needs, and scattered systems. Medely’s talent marketplace fills shifts with vetted local clinicians, reducing the need for costly agency coverage, with a 94% all-time fill rate.
Coordinating coverage for multiple departments gets old fast.
Unfortunately, for hospitals and larger health systems, this struggle is often a part of their daily routine.
When a callout happens, there’s a dance to get the shift filled promptly, requiring cross-referencing available staff across departments, coordinating with charge staff on each floor, and shuffling people around to fill the gap.
If a shift gets filled internally, all this shuffling is tedious, but the shift ultimately ends up filled.
What happens when it can’t get filled internally? By the time the scheduler realizes they need contingent labor, there’s not enough time to send the shift to an agency without paying costly fees. Hospitals then have two options: shell out premiums or risk being understaffed.
Three main problems perpetuate this cycle, and without addressing each problem, the issue will only be exacerbated.
- Lack of transparency into contingent labor being sent
- A range of different positions needed at one time
- Scattered workforce management systems
The right fit is hard to find
Running a facility requires all healthcare workers on the floor to have a specific skill set and the ability to execute those skills independently.
Facility administrators often express concern about contingent labor because they lack visibility into the clinicians an agency is sending. It’s not just about credentialing. Facility administrators need to trust that per diem staff can learn the facility’s processes, integrate with little orientation, and mesh well with full-time staff.
Facilities frequently default to calling on internal staff because they have already built stronger trust. Though these familiar team members are thoroughly vetted and predictable, depending too heavily on them can easily backfire.
What happens when that go-to staff member is on PTO? What happens when you’re going into overtime for the fourth day this week? What happens when another internal staff member leaves because they’re burnt out from picking up so many extra shifts?
Different positions needed for each floor
Unlike specialized facilities such as ASCs or behavioral health centers, hospitals demand a much broader scope of care. Consequently, health systems face the challenge of sourcing a wide variety of nursing and healthcare roles concurrently to maintain full operational coverage.
Whether you’re asking for a PACU RN, surgical tech, or ED RN, you need to be able to trust that they’re going to be reliable and compliant with your facility’s standards.
Because contingent staffing needs are inherently unpredictable, relying on flexible labor can feel like a financial gamble, especially when sourcing multiple specialized roles. Sourcing these specialized, hard-to-find roles can quickly escalate expenses, as agencies often charge premium rates for urgent and high-demand coverage requests.
Lack of workforce centralization
Furthermore, the process of filling open shifts is often manual. You have to reach out to charge staff on the phone, look at spreadsheets to see who’s on PTO, double-check your budget to make sure you’re not over, and contact employees to see if they can fill the shifts.
This system is time-consuming and inefficient. What should ideally take no more than five minutes now ends up taking you an hour, and that’s just for one singular position.
Most hospitals lack a centralized workforce solution that gives a comprehensive view of the schedule, including who’s out of office, who’s nearing overtime, and who is available across floors.
Talent Fusion supports hospital staffing coverage
Talent Fusion takes all of these problems and adapts workforce management to your specific facility and needs.
Finding the right fit
Our team of former nurses and health professionals vets and credentials all the clinicians on our platform. If you require any advanced specifications, you can add them when you post the shift.
For example, maybe you require all contingent labor to have multiple specialties in case they need to adjust to a different need, or perhaps you need OR staff that has specific surgical experience depending on your caseload.
Whatever your facility needs, Medely allows you to customize your shift posting to get the right fit in your facility every time.
Hospital staffing for now or later
No matter what position you need, we have your back.
Medely only charges you for completed shifts, so whenever you need coverage, we have your back, whether that’s two weeks before a shift needs to be filled or two days.
We know that when you’re posting multiple positions, you want to be able to trust the people entering your facility, which is why Medely’s Favorites feature allows you to do exactly that.
After a nurse or health professional on Medely picks up a shift at your facility, you’re able to add them to a prioritized list. Not only does this help you build a list of go-to professionals who excel at your facility, but this speeds up the process of posting a shift.
If you know there’s one ED RN who consistently does an excellent job, you can directly send a shift to them personally. Medely’s favorites features combine the flexibility of per diem staff with the trust of an internal float pool.
Centralized workforce view
Talent Fusion’s standout feature is the workforce integration aspect, synchronizing the view between internal and external staff and automating manual processes.
When a shift need arises, you can post it to Medely. After posting, it’ll go through our waterfall system. The shift is first sent to the least expensive option, which is typically an internal float pool. If nobody can pick up the shift, it’s then posted to Medely’s Talent Marketplace, which sends it out to pre-vetted, credentialed local nurses and health professionals. Medely has a 94% all-time shift fill rate, but if it doesn’t get picked up, the last phase of the waterfall will push it out to your agencies or third-party vendors.
That hour-long process of filling a shift? Reduced to the time it takes you to post the shift to Medely.
Hear from one of our customers
Adrian Shodi, CNO at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Trophy Club, had to adjust to the staffing needs of a hospital after previously working at a surgery center.
Through his transition, he had constant support from Medely.
Now, Adrian has been able to build a solid, reliable staffing strategy with over 6,300 shifts and assignments posted all-time and the average time to fill a shift coming in at just over an hour.
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