Healthcare is experiencing unprecedented change, and leaders are facing some of the most difficult challenges in industry history. Dramatic decreases to reimbursement and nursing shortages are driving health care executives to focus on labor. The golden ticket they’re searching for: a sustainable and affordable way to meet unpredictable patient demand amidst an one-in-a-generation nursing shortage. Nursing staff optimization – including novel workforce models that feature affordable and quality contingent labor solutions – are taking center spotlight in many strategic plans. More of creative ways and a new model of nursing staffing in this article.
Nursing Staff Optimization
Nurse managers arguably have the most difficult job in the healthcare industry. Clinical expertise alone no longer qualifies one as worthy of a leadership role in healthcare. A nursing manager needs to be a transformational leader focused on results in a heavily regulated, service-oriented industry that is strapped for cash and plagued with workforce shortages. Historical approaches, such as the use of agency personnel and incentivized shifts, no longer offer viable solutions to rising labor expense, burnout, and disengagement. While the industry embarks on a journey to achieve zero adverse clinical events, the margin for error with regard to the nurse manager is also approaching zero.
How to evolve your nursing workforce strategy
The demands are overwhelming to achieve high marks in patient satisfaction, quality outcomes, provider satisfaction, and employee engagement within the strict guidelines established by a plethora of regulatory agencies that govern care delivery. As if these demands were not enough, nurse managers must accomplish all of these amazing feats while meeting stringent budget constraints simultaneously.
By optimizing the full-time, part-time, and contingent staff resources, organizations can meet the daily needs of clinical and nonclinical departments while allowing flexibility to meet fluctuating patient volumes. Built on a platform of artificial intelligence and using cloud technology, a healthcare workforce management solution, like a contingent labor platform, is one of the most progressive tools available to nursing staff optimization and to control labor expense.
What is a contingent labor platform?
It’s a software solution that fuels a new way to think about, organize and manage your contingent and contract labor. It enables a number of :
- The software automates an organization’s scheduling process based on a specific customized set of rules.
- It facilitates real-time decision making that parallels organizational targets for expense and productivity.
- It creates comprehensive, automatic reports that help you visualize and understand performance across locations, departments and regions.
- Enables you to download data in various formats, facilitate predictive modeling for leaders in nursing, finance, and human resources.
- Additionally, nurse workforce optimization solutions allow senior leaders to identify top and bottom performers in real-time, analyze future scenarios that impact labor spending (such as opening new units), and make projections for future budget periods.
Even with rates softening post pandemic, every healthcare leader knows labor will continue to be a central focus for years to come. Those who want to set themselves up for future success, and future-proof their business models, will start considering methods to evolve their workforce strategy – including adding a contingent labor platform to their mix. What should you look for or consider when evaluating partners? Integrations with your other HRIS and finance systems, the ability to proactively reduce rates, and vendor neutrality are great places to start. For more information, check out this evaluation guide.