Our team had a blast attending and exhibiting once again at the American Society for Health Care Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA) Annual Conference and Exposition. During our stay in Chicago, we met with Human Resource professionals from a wide variety of healthcare organizations. It was a great experience to hear both from industry professionals and our current customers to see how we can better partner with HR professionals to help them grow and succeed.
Each year, we take away insights into how the healthcare industry is evolving and the challenges that many HR managers are facing. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the things we heard and experienced at this year’s conference.
Healthcare Recruiting and Retention Challenges
There continue to be huge shifts in recruitment and hiring processes for potential job candidates. Human Resource managers need to be more ‘candidate-centric’ than ‘employer-centric’ to have successful recruitment and interview strategies. It has never been more important to have a strong brand presence and showcase unique and distinct characteristics of your healthcare organization’s mission and how each staff member plays a key role.
It is critical that when interviewing, your team has the tools and materials to make evidence-based decisions. Take advantage of behavior assessments, skill surveys, leadership potential tests, and more. Our friends at TalentPlus have a great resource for your process when selecting candidates’ power skills.
Healthcare Human Resource Pain Points:
- Staff Shortages
- High Turnover
- Employee Burnout
- Slow Credentialing Process
Provider Staff Shortages
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the need for an additional 203,700 new RNs each year through 2026 to fill newly created positions and to replace retiring nurses. It’s estimated that by 2022, there will be 1.2 million vacancies for nursing positions.
Retiring providers are creating a large gap for care that cannot be filled fast enough. Many medical programs, schools, and educators are not keeping pace or are unable to provide enough opportunities for more individuals to enter the healthcare workforce in a timely manner.
High Turnover in Healthcare
Hospital turnover rates continue to increase – the average turnover rate in 2018 was 19%.
The cost of losing a bedside nurse alone is around $52k, which could result in the average hospital losing $4.4M – $6.9M a year. Younger employees want a more fulfilling experience when it comes to training, career advancement, benefits, and more. Sometimes, company culture or job expectations can be misrepresented or poorly communicated upon hire, leaving providers confused and frustrated.
Physician Burnout
A 2015 Mayo Clinic Study found that more than half of American physicians now have at least one sign of burnout, a 9% increase from the group’s prior results in a study conducted 3 years earlier. Fatigue, stress, detachment, being overwhelmed can all lead to burnout. Burnout is viewed as a threat to patient safety because depersonalization is presumed to result in poorer interactions with patients. Many times, providers feel that their work-to-life balance is hard to maintain given scheduling requirements, unrealistic availability, and often the level of trauma or emotional strain of their jobs each day.
Slow Provider Credentialing
The cost of just one month’s delay in credentialing the average primary care physician can amount to over $30,000 in lost revenue due to the inability to bill for services. For a hospital hiring 50 primary care physicians annually, such a delay can cost over $1.5 million. Consider what these amounts add up to for higher-billing specialties.
Learn how HR Teams can leverage smarter data to recruit top healthcare talent by watching a replay of our webinar below.
Great Company Culture Matters for Healthcare Organizations
Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times. It’s living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall.
– Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO
When we think about how to define a strong culture for our employees at ProviderTrust, we try to use this lens.
- Culture is the character and personality of your organization.
- Culture is what sets you apart.
- Culture is the sum of your organization’s values, traditions, ethos, behaviors, commitments, policies, and attitudes.
Check out our previous webinar – How Top HR Teams Focus on Culture by Developing and Empowering People to learn more about creating a lasting impact on employees to build and live out great company culture.
Healthcare Credential Verification Processes are Out-Dated
Can we all agree that there are some major changes necessary to improve healthcare and the quality of patient care? ProviderTrust supplies healthcare organizations with smarter data to make informed decisions to ensure patient safety and the quality of providers in their facilities, networks, referring populations, and more. The more we talk with HR professionals, the more we discover high priorities to optimize and automate some of their tedious and manual processes; one such need is checking credentials (licenses, certifications, registrations, etc.) from primary sources.
Transitioning from Manual to Automated License Verification
What does your current license monitoring process look like? Have you automated most of this responsibility, or are there manual elements that make you nervous? We hear quite a few ways of managing license verification tasks and keeping track of renewal dates, such as Excel spreadsheets, calendar alerts, physical notes/files for each provider, you name it.
Unfortunately, these processes open up your organization to numerous compliance risks and inefficiencies. Incorporating a responsive software solution with real-time primary source verification tools and automated alerts reduces manual mistakes and elevates your visibility of each provider’s required credentials.
Transitioning from manual verification to an automated solution may seem daunting, but we’ve made it easy to monitor all of your populations from one location with dedicated support specialists to walk you through each step.
Passport for Healthcare HR Professionals
Passport by ProviderTrust delivers freedom from your HR and Compliance processes so that you can focus on developing people. Our software solution is designed to heighten your compliance awareness and management, while also giving you real-time updates and alert functionalities to easily notify licensed providers when an action is necessary. Interested in learning more about our solutions? Get started by chatting with one of our team members!
Written by Michael Rosen, Esq.
Michael brings over 20 years of experience founding and leading risk mitigation businesses, receiving numerous accolades such as Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500 Award and Nashville Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year.
