We know that recruitment professionals, service line leaders, and Chief Medical Officers have some of the most demanding jobs in the industry, as healthcare organizations face unprecedented staffing challenges. With turnover rates reaching alarming highs—The American Hospital Association estimates a shortage of up to 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026—and labor costs rising, managing an operating budget is a high-pressure enterprise fraught with pitfalls.
Fortunately, an intelligent workforce optimization partner backed by technology can be a powerful ally as you navigate healthcare resource planning amid these daunting headwinds. Let’s explore some smart, modern staffing strategies that help healthcare organizations do more with less, while empowering CMOs and recruitment directors with the information they need to keep ahead of what’s coming.
Optimize Internal Resources to Unlock Cost Savings
Smarter healthcare staff management begins with making an intelligent assessment of not only what internal resources you have, but whether you have them employed at the best time and place. By analyzing historical staffing data alongside patient admission and discharge patterns, organizations can align shifts to ensure adequate coverage at peak times, reducing staff burnout and preventing overstaffing during quieter periods.
Intelligent workforce optimization, backed by an integrated platform purpose-built for locums, will unlock the power of historical staffing data to perform a deeper analysis of staffing costs against the revenue being generated. Surfacing this aggregate data and making it actionable through proactive, strategic staffing decisions that you can justify with hard ROI metrics will enable you to reduce stress on your providers while demonstrating a positive impact on patient care and your bottom line.
The critical piece to solve this staffing puzzle is presenting a unified view of all locums staffing resources. What was once a daunting task of cross-referencing spreadsheets, databases, and institutional knowledge can be easily managed with Venn’s healthcare workforce management platform, which unifies the availability of permanent, flexible, and external resources in a single schedule.
With a singular, holistic view of staffing, you can readily identify gaps in coverage and match them with the best internal resource for the job, whether that’s assigning permanent staff or recruiting the shift from your float pool before having to tap more expensive, external resources.
Through a careful analysis of staffing requirements, Venn helps healthcare organizations strike the optimal balance between core staff, contingent contract labor, and other flexible staffing resources, enabling them to reduce healthcare labor costs. With the help of technology-enabled workforce optimization, your organization will run efficiently and in sound financial health.
Keep Your Organization Moving Swimmingly with a Well-Managed Float Pool
A float pool can be your most strategic asset as you design a sustainable staffing strategy.
In addition to being more cost effective than relying alone on agency or locum tenens staffing, this offers a higher level of consistency in delivering high quality patient care. The ability to tap an on-demand workforce that is familiar with your organization’s policies, systems, and culture allows you to maintain continuity of care and reduce orientation time.
⇒ This also appeals to clinicians seeking more autonomy and flexibility in their schedules as they place more value on work-life balance.
So, healthcare organizations are increasingly investing in technology to enable creative staffing strategies that empower staff to work where and when they want, while ensuring the coverage is compete, credentialed, and cost-effective.
Through our platform, Kimedics, Venn puts powerful scheduling capabilities in clinicians’ hands with an intuitive platform that broadcasts jobs and shifts that can be instantly scheduled with the click of a button. On the backend, Venn manages privileges across multiple locations, and tracks utilization, ensuring a sustainable, repeatable staffing plan in the moment—and into the future.
By combining high tech with a high touch service model, Venn guides clients through a tailored float pool management strategy that keeps costs contained and clinicians content. And Venn supports healthcare leaders through the entire process, from planning through management of recruiting, compliance, billing, and schedule management.
Once a float pool is in place, many healthcare organizations can reduce their dependency on more expensive contingent staff and premium pay, while increasing the satisfaction of permanent staff, who benefit from flexible scheduling options, including job sharing or part-time arrangements. Meanwhile, healthcare leaders have the agility to keep ahead of the unexpected, the ability to manage costs, and real-time visibility for ROI reporting.
You’ve Never Been Better Equipped to Overcome Staffing Challenges
While healthcare staffing challenges continue to grow and evolve, so has the capability of technology available to overcome them. Transform the complex matrix of schedules, payrolls, permissions, credentialing, and compliance into actionable insights that empower healthcare leaders to quickly make more strategic decisions.
Healthcare organizations that implement a data-driven workforce optimization solution like Venn commonly cite meaningful improvements in their utilization of internal staff resources and increased savings from more efficient deployment of locum tenens and temporary staff—allowing them to redeploy savings to strategic initiatives and staff development.
These organizations also report better coverage by deploying their resources strategically based on analytics and flexible staffing strategies like float pools. Equally important is the impact these strategies have on reducing administrative burden, improving the ability to immediately and accurately report on a variety of crucial metrics with confidence and ease, and ultimately enhancing patient care by ensuring the right providers are in the right place at the right time.
How to Ensure a Successful Transition to Healthcare Management Software
The most successful workforce management implementations consistently have the following in common: strong leadership support, a commitment to a change management plan, clear communication about the goals of the optimization initiative, and a full commitment to data-driven decision making as people move away from information of paper and their institutional knowledge.
With Venn as your technology and strategic workforce solutions partner, your organization can overcome operational challenges while delivering a high standard of patient care. Contact us today to learn how Venn can help you optimize your workforce management and efficiency.