Vendor management software ensures nurses today and tomorrow As healthcare employers, we would probably be better off to resolve ourselves to the fact that we live in a constant state of  ‘nurse  shortage’, a condition where every able bodied, qualified nurse is an asset and finding and retaining the best and brightest is an ongoing challenge.  This way, when water cooler talk revolves around today’s or tomorrow’s healthcare staffing challenges and nurse shortage, you can say “All over it, especially since I started sourcing nurse job candidates with vendor management software.” Earlier in the month, the New England Journal of Medicine once again reminded us that another nursing shortage is just around corner. This one caused by an exodus of nurses leaving the profession as the economy recovers. Findings in the Journal estimate that approximately 118,000 FTE registered nurses will exit the workforce in the next three years, but because of a lack of how recessions affect RN transitions in and out of healthcare "employers and workforce planners are unable to anticipate how many nurses might choose to leave the workforce once a robust jobs recovery begins," reports the [+]

Physical and Occupational Therapists are in high demand. Candidate Direct aims to keep healthcare employers staffed. With millions more Americans gaining access to healthcare, how will employers maintain adequate therapist staffing levels amid a shortage of qualified allied health professionals? Sue Higgins, Product Development Director for Candidate Direct, suggests the first step to procuring and retaining staff is to engage a powerful web-based healthcare staffing tool. "This way, the entire recruiting process is handled through a single source. Reporting and tracking are consistent; regulatory compliance is a snap and automated features save employers hundreds of man hours a year." Here's how Candidate Direct works: Create an account to join the Candidate Direct Marketplace Jobs will be posted just to your specific selected agency pool Recruitment Agencies and other Candidate Direct national talent sources submit candidates for your jobs You select the best candidate for the job at the lowest rate There is no investment in hardware or software and there are no monthly fees to utilize the Candidate Direct Marketplace. Higgins summarizes five easy ways healthcare employers can begin to streamline recruitment, saving time, money and aggravation. 1. Evaluate Existing Therapist Recruitment Strategies Whether your facility utilizes therapy staffing agencies or handles therapist recruiting internally, [+]

The numbers are in. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported healthcare leading the nation in job creation the first nine months of 2011. September was a banner month, reports Labor, with healthcare employment taking 42 percent of new jobs created. By year’s end, job creation in healthcare is set to outpace all of 2010 by a third. “With more nurses, therapists and allied health professionals on-boarding at facilities of all types, effectively managing contingent labor, travelers and temporary help will be vital to operations,” said Sue Higgins, Director of Product Development at StayStaffed Technologies, a Florida-based vendor management firm. "Larger healthcare employers are back to hiring and the demand for nurse specialists and therapists with advanced credentials keeps growing." To recruit, hire and process these highly-skilled healthcare jobs candidates, Stay Staffed Technologies provides healthcare employers with a virtual staffing Marketplace.*Loaded with automated features, this Internet-based vendor management marketplace enables the accurate matching of healthcare job candidates with posted job descriptions, promotes easy candidate review, documentation and credentialing, and establishes a foundation on which healthcare employers can build an internal workforce of talented candidates to call on in a moment’s notice.  The Marketplace requires no [+]

Healthcare facilities of all sizes can contain costs, track contingent workforce activities and optimize healthcare staffing spend Human resource professionals find oasis in Vendor Management System contingent labor technologies You're a human resources leader at a busy hospital facility. The pressure is on to make every healthcare staffing penny count, and with healthcare reform expanding patient populations and restructuring reimbursements, higher ups are calling on you to support healthcare staffing decisions with ROI. Enter "Vendor Management Systems" or VMS. A means of tracking patterns in staffing volume, quantifying the performance of contingent workers and managing all costs associated with a contingent workforce of nurses, doctors, therapists, PAs, interns, orderlies and volunteers. It's free to implement, and peers in the profession have told you their vendor management system saves time and money. It's tremendous, say peers, to view and manage all of their healthcare travelers, per diems, locum tenens and scope-of-work contractors in real time and with just an Internet connection. Having access to a highly competitive healthcare staffing environment, where staffing agencies bid on postings and where volume pricing with preferred vendors can be negotiated. “Whereas one staffing vendor agency may have a stated  bill rate of $64 an hour  [+]

Simulation testing gaining in healthcare employer nurse training circles With healthcare reform’s focus on patient safety, lower readmission rates and reduced medical errors, it makes sense for healthcare employers to conduct nursing simulations as a means of assembling surgical checklists, timing procedures and correcting flaws in protocols, equipment and training before something goes awry in the real world. What nursing simulation does for nurse training, say hospital administrators, is give nurses the opportunity to practice in virtual environments where they aren’t “under the gun,” so as to better familiarize nurses with how to prioritize in critical situations. Additionally, nursing simulation allows practitioners to train on new clinical processes and to enhance individual and team skills before encountering patients in the real world, where stressful situations can lead to medical errors. Though simulation testing is nothing new to the nurse training world, the process an ideal way for healthcare employers to evaluate where patient care delivery can be streamlined and made more convenient and safer for the patient and medical staff. One Abington Pennsylvania healthcare employer reported great success with nursing simulation when developing an ER program to improve upon the hospital’s left-without-treatment rates.  Another relied on nursing [+]

Higher levels of education in healthcare have been tied to improved patient safety, outcomes and satisfaction. The demand for nurses with advanced degrees, such as the Advanced Nurse Practitioner, is increasing in clinical and educational settings, and even physical therapists are finding their skills in high demand, especially DPT's in sought-after specialties. The growth in outpatient care and the profession’s thirst for direct patient access, means that the DPT (Doctorate of Physical Therapy) is becoming the minimum for entering the field. Employing the best-educated, experienced nurses and therapists can make all the difference in quality patient care, no matter the type of facility. Consequently, hospitals and outpatient centers have begun increasingly upgrading the educational levels of their staffs and searching for caregiver graduates with terminal degrees. For this reason, healthcare employers choose to utilize the services of  Candidate Direct Marketplace TM (CDM) - a web-based, leading-edge technology that enables nurse managers and administrators to fulfill contingent workforce needs and to source candidates from anywhere in the country. This simplified workforce management solution helps healthcare organizations increase fill rates, decrease staffing spend, and, perhaps most importantly, significantly reduce time to hire. Product Development Manager for Candidate Direct, Sue Higgins, said [+]

While the recession does present a challenge to professionals working everywhere from world-renowned institutions and non-profits to up and coming businesses, the healthcare marketplace shows light at the end of the tunnel by offering recession-proof careers in stable, high paying Case Management Jobs. Because of leadership and significant organizational skills—all key in increasing patient access and affordability to healthcare—Case Managers continue to be in high demand. In a time when cutting costs matters more than ever, Case Managers rise to the occasion by reviewing medical documentation, discovering errors in billing, and assisting with  the social worker aspects in patient placement with a keen eye for detail and ethics; at the end of the day, their collective efforts save healthcare employers billions of dollars. Case Management jobs are in the nerve centers of skilled nursing facilities, outpatient and rehab centers. Along with these fast paced environments, come challenges associated with a varied job description. An effective Case Manager wears many hats; he or she is not only an advocate, improving clinical outcomes by raising the bar on efficiency and patient satisfaction; they must also look after the financial well-being of the healthcare employer. Healthcare Vendor [+]