I’ve been talking to a number of healthcare leaders lately, and the trend that stands out—and worrying—is the declining size and strength of the workforce amid a surge in patient demand. While not surprising, it’s interesting because this is by no means a new trend. It’s also not necessarily the result of a pandemic, though that’s where people often point fingers.
The pandemic has forced clinicians who have been exhausted, frustrated or afraid of making mistakes for years to take the obvious action of a “big resignation.” As such, the rest of 2022 will remain focused on how to retain, rebuild and revitalize the workforce.
Why is this seen as a priority rather than health equity, cost reduction, or a better patient experience? Because labor shortages are the limiting factor in the rate of growth, and the more comprehensive changes needed in healthcare all have a dashed line back to “operational capacity” and “worker capacity.”
The accessibility and quality of care cannot be improved without enough people to staff new buildings or provide new, expanded services. Nor can you cut costs when you pay a premium to recruit and retain people in existing buildings and maintain current service. In addition, long lines for everything from routine check-ups and medication refills to lab tests and emergency interventions overwhelm employees, leading to more resignations and even longer lines—and more dissatisfied patients and employees. This is a vicious circle that must be broken.
So leaders hoping that prioritizing workforce expansion — or at least stabilizing and strengthening it — will work.
Three Ways to Improve Clinical Competence
Those looking to serve more patients, provide more services, reduce costs, or provide equal and expanded access to quality care can address staffing and skills shortages in several ways. They can:
- Turning to technology to increase clinical and non-clinical staff and automate workflows can help ease the burden of nursing, no matter how many people are at work or how many patients must be seen.
- A complete remodeling of care to redistribute services on and possibly off campus.
- Just actively recruit and train.
While many leading health systems researching the latter, at a time when money doesn’t matter anymore and all the incentives in the world won’t be enough to attract or retain talent. For exhausted healthcare professionals to stay or return, and for students to feel compelled to pursue careers in healthcare, a fundamental cultural change must be seen. That’s why most clinicians, IT leaders, and administrators devote more time, money, and effort to the first two options.
The faster they digitally mature healthcare information, communication, and workflow systems, the sooner they’ll see efficiency gains — even if they don’t employ a single person.In fact, nine out of ten hospital leaders participated in a recent global study agree The quality of patient care will improve if nurses, clinicians, and supporting non-clinical healthcare workers have access to collaborative tools and healthcare applications. More specifically, they argue that “real-time intelligence is critical for optimal patient care.”
This could come in the form of clinical mobility solutions that allow instant communication and access to patient records or real-time location systems (RTLS) across care teams, as well as smart software solutions that provide actionable insights and prescriptive guidance. Executives also said artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and advanced Internet of Things (IoT) platforms will become more commonplace as they aim to automate data capture, information flow and even decision-making — all of which can save money Time and effort in clinical and non-clinical workflows.
However, For technology to be a true solution to today’s workforce problems, it must be easy to deploy, configure, secure and manage. Otherwise, it only complicates the problem and places a burden on the IT team. If designing, testing, implementing or maintaining a solution requires significant resources, the return on investment (ROI) may be flat even when the project is fully launched.
This is why decision makers are increasingly opting for hardware and software solutions designed for healthcare applications. They know the move to 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will require a major overhaul of their infrastructure, and depending on the age of their legacy systems, they may need to tear down, replace, or rebuild their entire technology architecture for widespread digitization and automation. Therefore, they will look for technology platforms that lighten the load and win fast.
outsource to cover shortfalls
Understandably, for those constrained from a financial or workforce perspective, any kind of digital transformation seems impossible right now, even if some kind of drastic change is necessary. As a result, some healthcare leaders are looking beyond their four walls for ways to provide the quality care that people need and expect.We’ve seen more and more small clinics pop up in pharmacies, grocery stores and even corporate workplaces and home health product is growing, even if patients have the option to resume clinical visits. But expect some headwinds to the “retailization of healthcare.”Not everyone thinks this is this Solve labor problems.
This is definitely a convenience factor for patients who can get everything they need, including consultations, all in one place at the store. Providing equitable care becomes less important when in-person or virtual clinics can be hosted at local recreation centers, especially in rural areas where full-scale medical centers may not make sense. However, you still need skilled personnel to provide these services. You also need certain technical capabilities to ensure access to patient information in digital health devices and electronic medical records (EMRs), which is key to continued care and quality care in the face of physician inconsistency.
Also, you cannot outsource urgent care or surgery to retail and community sites. Therefore, these mixed care models and community alliances are not sufficient to make labor issues non-issues. There is always a need for technology to augment the healthcare workforce.
Technology is an agent of change
While we may see an imbalance between staff and patient numbers for some time, that doesn’t mean that healthcare capacity has to always be out of proportion to demand. If clinicians can see twice as many patients in a day without feeling overwhelmed or making mistakes just because we change workflow structures and increase technology utilization, it doesn’t matter if hiring grinds to a halt. Everyone gets what they want:
- Patients don’t have to travel long distances or wait hours (or months) to receive quality care.
- Clinicians and other staff feel productive, valuable and satisfied with their work and encourage others to work with them.
- Administrators will be able to operate more facilities and provide more services without worrying about delays, disruptions or degradation of the patient experience, resulting in better profits.
As a result, healthcare leaders will evolve care models to meet the needs of patients and providers, and they will actively invest in technology to facilitate care within these models. The hope is that this will adjust the size of the workforce—or at least increase care capacity as demand increases, improving patient outcomes and experiences.
