Healthcare’s workforce crisis is far from over, experts say Few suppliers are able to hire themselves from the job shortage.It is more important than ever for health systems to ensure they minimise turnover of existing staff – a priority MultiCare Health System A new approach is being taken in Washington state.
In April, the 11-hospital health system launched a program called Spring Contact Week, during which supervisors, managers and directors cleared meetings from their calendars so they could connect with front-line staff. Have one-on-one meetings. Now Stacey Parkin, MultiCare’s chief patient experience officer, is ready to talk about the program and why other hospitals should steal the idea.
In an interview, she said the idea came from Florence Zhang, president of the health system. Chang is responding to feedback from MultiCare leaders that they don’t have enough opportunities to connect with employees and learn about their specific pain points.
Nearly 3,200 rounds with staff in the week beginning April 10 432 teams are represented. These teams cover all of MultiCare’s departments, from nurses to doctors, from kitchen staff to call center agents. When leaders hold these meetings, they are advised to identify the root cause of departures by making employees comfortable and encouraging them to talk openly about what they like and dislike about working for the health system, Parkin said.
“us Want to understand their need for loyalty and staying in the organization,” Parkin said. “We want to find specific things about what’s working well and what’s not working well, and then categorize them. “
To achieve this, MultiCare leaders asked their employees questions such as “If you could change one process at MultiCare, what would it be?” “What would you like to see more of in our health system? support?” Parkin said it’s important and intentional to ask these questions in a one-on-one situation, because in group-based rounds there will always be some people who speak often and others who never share.
MultiCare leaders use password healthof employee rounding solutions that allow them to easily digitally record team member comments. By the end of the week, Parkin said, leaders sent nearly 10,000 employee comments to her team for review.
About a third of the 3,165 MultiCare employees surveyed said their biggest problem was related to staffing shortages, and more specifically, burnout associated with having to work overtime and take on extra responsibilities, Parkin said. . Technical issues were another common concern for employees, she said, although she noted that it could be related to a recent system outage experienced by one of MultiCare’s suppliers. Parkin’s team is still reviewing and triaging the comments, but she said labor shortages and technology issues were the two main concerns so far.
The Patient Experience team is triaging these comments for dissemination to the appropriate department. For example, comments related to EMR usability are forwarded to the CIO so that he and his team can begin designing programs or implementing process changes to address employee pain points. Likewise, comments on payroll will be passed to Human Resources.
As department heads begin to develop plans to address employee input that the Parkin team forwarded to them, MultiCare has begun to enhance some of its plans based on feedback from Spring Connection Week. For example, the health system is planning more job fairs and talking to technology vendors to automate some manual tasks for its employees, such as EMR note-taking.
Parkin said the employee feedback from Spring Contact Week was not only much richer than usual, but also more honest and specific. All health systems can benefit from the model, she added, because it allows them to rapidly generate reams of anecdotal data illuminating the biggest problems facing their workforces. MultiCare plans to repeat the program in the fall.
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