If the shortage of skilled labor wasn’t enough of a recruitment problem for healthcare providers, a recent CareerBuilder survey reveals that 34% of healthcare workers will be looking for new jobs in 2013 up from 24% in 2012. The reasons that healthcare workers gave for seeking a new position included heavy workloads, few promotion opportunities, inflexible schedules, and general frustration with work/life balance. 48% of Healthcare Professionals are Passive Job Seekers With both retention and recruitment being vital issues to resolve, it’s more important than ever for healthcare providers to streamline their recruitment process and make more informed staffing decisions. The survey also reported that 82% of healthcare professionals would be open to discussing a new job opportunity if it arose. The 48% considered passive candidates – those who are generally satisfied with their jobs but open to new possibilities – are the solution to both the recruitment and retention problems facing healthcare providers. Potential passive candidates reported that their reason for remaining with their current employer included the enjoyment of working with co-workers, location, salary/benefits, flexible shifts, and a general feeling of having satisfying and rewarding work. If that sounds like the ideal employee, it’s [+]

Construction of new hospitals has flatlined somewhat in 2012 while healthcare executives measure the impact of the Affordable Care Act. According to Health Facilities Management magazine, “Industry insiders expect roughly the same amount of spending on hospital construction in 2012 as in 2011, with specialty hospital projects and infrastructure upgrades helping to offset the drop in acute care hospitals. The survey shows that the shift in priorities from traditional hospitals to smaller, neighborhood or satellite facilities is accelerating.” A study conducted by HFM in regards to healthcare expansion plans reported that, “Future projects most frequently cited by survey parti­cipants in response to reforms are emergency departments, by 17 percent; outpatient facilities in neighborhood settings, by 16 percent; medical office build­ing expansions, 16 percent; and primary care clinics and urgent care centers in neighborhoods, both 14 percent.” Trauma Center Openings on the Rise Since 2009, more than 200 trauma centers have opened across the country with an additional 75 hospitals seeking approval to add centers to their operations, according to Kaiser Health News. Leading the charge in trauma center development is HCA, a Nashville-based healthcare company. HCA has added, or intends to add, 20 new trauma centers to its network in southern states such [+]

Fueled in Part by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Healthcare Staffing isn’t always easy. Especially if a healthcare provider’s local labor pool doesn’t support the RN specialists patients require. To fill gaps in bedside care, the ER, OR, NICU and others; healthcare facilities nationwide rely on travel nurses to supplement their permanent staff. Their skills are just as good as staff nurses and in many cases better prepared to care for and communicate with disparate patient populations, indicate findings by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As 30 million plus Americans gain access to healthcare through the nation’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, reports a Foundation study, traveling nurses may play a bigger role than ever in staffing healthcare providers that face growing patient populations and attrition by older nurses. And though an increase in the number of patients is bottom line news for any healthcare provider, headaches in sourcing qualified nurse candidates can be daunting and costly. Time consuming interviews, piles of paperwork and endless phone calls to onboard supplemental RNs for multiple units or floors can be drastically reduced with services of a healthcare vendor management web-based platform Fortunately, healthcare providers that suffer from in-house or regional nurse shortages [+]

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 [+]

High level of sanitation vital to patient safety and to lowering readmissions and morbidity A shocking story published in the Wall Street Journal* last month is enough to make your skin crawl. No, it wasn’t an article about substandard medical practices in remote third-world nations. It was about unsafe injection practices, improper medication preparation and the re-use of single-dose vials and needles right here in the U.S. Just when you thought those days were gone. The article serves as a reminder for healthcare employers and professionals to maintain a high level of hygiene and sanitation in all aspects of practice. Sadly, the thousands of patients who were potentially exposed to Hepatitis B, C, HIV and other serious infectious diseases in the article didn’t have to be. All that was required was for caregivers to acknowledge what one commentary referred to as ‘sterile techniques 101’: Don’t use needles twice, single-dose vials are just that – single dose; and always prepare injection medications in a sterilized environment. Though much has been done at the regulatory level over the past decade to improve safe medical practices in hospitals - outpatient clinics, as indicated the spate of cases [+]

Of the 120 healthcare executives participating in a recent nurse staffing study, * 63 percent ranked quality as the number one reason they planned to hire more travel nurses and temporary labor in 2011.  Number two and three reasons were the immediate availability of travel nurses resulting in fast time to fill rates, and the reduction of non-productivity costs associated with hiring permanent staff, such as recruiting, payroll, benefits administration and others. BOCA RATON, FL July, 2011 – Effectively blending travel nurses and contingent workers with permanent staff can save healthcare employers up to 13 percent on staffing costs. Though during tough economic times hospitals may limit the use of travelers and temporary workers as a means of cutting costs, vendor staffing experts at Candidate Direct say doing so can have the opposite effect: too few travelers can increase staffing costs and reduce nurse efficiency. Last year alone, almost 90 percent of contingent staff users said costs would rise if they eliminated the use of temporary workers.  By increasing the ratio of travel nurses to permanent nurse staff hospitals can reduce costly overtime, health benefits, payroll taxes, pensions and paid time off. "With economic uncertainty on the horizon, investing in permanent staff [+]

Or will hospitals leverage healthcare staffing technologies in favor of the bottom line? With third-party payor reimbursements dropping below sustainable levels and healthcare reform shrinking Medicare and Medicaid, hospitals will find profits harder to come by. For some, better managing staffing agencies and using data to drive staffing decisions will do the trick. For others, outsourcing workforce management functions or re-evaluating managed care contracts will be sufficient to reign-in cost centers and boost profits. Staffing, a healthcare employer's single largest expense, is probably where hospital cost reductions can affect profits most quickly. Patient census data and the benchmarking of hours worked per case allow for the flexible and accurate scheduling of part timers and travelers. This reduces staff down time, heightens productivity during peak times and is critical to not over or under staffing facilities, both of which adversely impact profits. Tightening vendor policies and diligently tracking the performance of staffing agencies can also improve the look of a P&L. Narrowing vendor relationships to only top performers and holding agencies accountable to competitive bill rates and timely submission of documents will save staffing managers time, money and aggravation; savings that can be converted to [+]

More healthcare employers hiring temporary medical professionals in wake of recession A recent employment survey conducted by the staffing industry’s leading job board suggests that temporary workers are back in vogue. Twenty-nine percent of companies’ surveyed from February to March said they hired temporary workers in the first quarter of 2011 and 26 percent said they would in the second quarter, reports Staffing Industry Analysts, a firm specializing in workforce management trends. Though the uptick in employment is great news for healthcare staffing agencies, healthcare employers must find an effective means of managing temporary and contract labor, or the inefficient on boarding and off boarding of employees will result in wasted staffing dollars and diminished patient care delivery. The survey, which included 2,800 hiring managers and 5,600 workers across a broad spectrum of industries and company sizes, also showed 28 percent of respondents hiring permanent employees in the first quarter – the biggest increase in three years. "With healthcare reform knocking on everyone’s door, telling hospitals and healthcare employers to ramp up patient safety efforts and increase care quality, a workforce management solution such as the Candidate Direct Marketplace enables administrators to manage both temporary and [+]

Bridging gaps in patient care can save lives, experts say. Healthcare employers are deploying web-based workforce management solutions such as vendor management to fill open positions. Vendor Management doubled in 2008-2010 and demand for the technology is expected to continue. BOCA RATON, FL April, 2011 - A nurse staffing report published in the New England Journal of Medicine March 17 demonstrates the importance flexible nurse staffing has on positive patient outcomes. The three-year study, entitled "Nurse Staffing and Inpatient Hospital Mortality" tracked nurse staffing levels across 43 hospital units at a tertiary Magnet facility. Findings showed that when nurses were accurately matched with patient needs shift-by-shift, risk of mortality decreased. "This study demonstrates that hospitals must implement staffing systems that are flexible enough to meet the individual needs of each patient for every shift, every unit and every day, said ANA President Karen A. Daley, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN. "It shows that nurse staffing should not be viewed as a cost to be minimized, but as a critical factor in producing quality patient outcomes - ultimately saving lives." Healthcare providers can achieve [+]

Healthcare Employers Report Rising Demand for Contingent Workforce Patient boon and shortage of specialists cause for growth in healthcare staffing Though contingent workers were the first to go when healthcare bottom lines “bottomed out,” many are the first to return, as hospitals reconfigure healthcare staffing needs in the face of economic recovery and lingering uncertainty. Workflows need to be re-evaluated and nurses, physicians and therapists knowledgeable in healthcare information technologies need to be sourced to comply with pending government reform mandates. Just two years ago, millions of newly unemployed Americans lost their healthcare benefits as the worst recession in decades swept the nation.  The demand for medical services declined and margins for some healthcare employers sank below sustainable standards. Pay and hiring freezes were implemented and spend on staffing got so tight that even some of the most seasoned medical specialists lost their jobs. Now by granting 46 million more Americans access to healthcare they never had, healthcare reform promises to repopulate hospital floors and rekindle the demand for acute care and niche medical services. This boon in patient flow will call many back to work and result in modest growth for the healthcare staffing industry in [+]