Supply and demand challenges in healthcare continue to be in focus as we prepare to enter the third year of this once-in-a-century pandemic.
Healthcare leaders are all too familiar with these issues, as short- and long-term shortages continue to plague the field, from personal protective equipment and ventilators to testing kits and other medical supplies. However, these issues pale in comparison to the growing labor shortages that touch nearly every facet of a healthy ecosystem.
This shortage existed long before the pandemic and has pushed the health system to the brink of its capacity. In fact, recently the hospital CEO report For the first time since 2004, staffing has overtaken financial challenges as the top concern, according to the Institute of Healthcare Executives.
While there is no single solution to this challenge overnight, there is some positive news. That said, healthcare organizations are starting to realize how data and analytics can be applied across the provider community to help solve this problem through an emerging practice: workforce intelligence.
Let’s explore why workforce intelligence has become critical in healthcare.
Provides opportunities for analysis and planning
The pandemic has undoubtedly tested the limits of supply and demand. But evolving delivery channels, healthcare consumerism and an aging population are forcing leaders to rethink how they plan, engage and recruit clinical staff. The result is a perfect storm of staffing shortages, soaring contract labor costs and unprecedented levels of clinician burnout.
By providing health systems with comprehensive, real-time insights into their current and future clinical workforces, leaders can better address the growing challenges of care logistics. It enables leaders to leverage real-time data to address gaps in workforce supply, allocate valuable resources more efficiently and optimize their care networks.
Addressing the burnout crisis
Staffing shortages and inefficient deployment models drive overuse of clinicians, which are key drivers of frustration and attrition.according to Deloitte Global Healthcare Outlook 2022, a staggering 55% of frontline healthcare workers report burnout, with the highest rate among the youngest workers (69%). Therefore, reducing unnecessary steps in the workflow and accelerating information for better decision-making can profoundly affect morale and the bottom line.
Reduce friction in clinician deployment
Few tasks lament clinicians more than accreditation.
Obtaining and validating clinician information can be expensive and tedious, especially when manual operations are required by already overwhelmed administrative staff. Connecting to supplier data networks and applying workforce intelligence can significantly improve this process for administrators and clinicians, reducing deployment time and reducing the burden on overstretched clinical staff waiting to be relieved.
This difference not only removes the burden of more paperwork, but also enables clinicians to manage the most important document of their careers: their credentials.
Get health systems ready at all times
In this challenging environment, the efficiency and flexibility of health systems are critical. Real-time updates ensure a ready workforce can be rapidly deployed where they are needed most, while meeting certification and privilege regulations.
Historically this has been a daunting task, but with big data, information related to practitioners’ credentials, skills and competencies can be easily collected. This provides multiple benefits to the clinician team, including:
- To enable care collaboration: Leverage digitally verified provider data to cross credentials across locations and care partners, enabling organizations to expand services and revenue. This enables healthcare systems to more easily share providers to support community care collaboration and national telehealth networks.
- Optimization Economics: Physicians generate thousands of dollars a day for the health care system, offsetting rising costs elsewhere in the organization. Reducing unnecessary delays is the key to earning income. By enabling teams to more quickly decide how and where to deploy clinical resources, and privilege provisions have been met, administrators can reduce weeks or even months of labor-intensive problems, while also improving patient access to care.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Workforce Intelligence
While U.S. healthcare labor shortages have been in the spotlight of late, the pandemic has only worsened a long-established trend. The problem is only expected to get worse over the next decade due to issues such as an aging population, longer lifespans, rising chronic diseases and worrying rates of burnout. We cannot pretend that there are any simple off-the-shelf solutions to this incredible challenge.
But by embracing big data and workforce intelligence as solutions to staffing challenges, healthcare leaders can start building better networks, eliminating deployment delays, meeting patient needs, improving outcomes, and ultimately improving the bottom line—all at stake Victory.
Photo: People Pictures, Getty Images
