Improving Your Business Cash Flow

Unfortunately, staffing shortages are a common problem at healthcare institutions. If you're struggling with staffing issues at your medical facilities, you might be making some common mistakes that are contributing to the difficulties that you face.

The following are seven mistakes you may be making that contribute to the medical staffing challenges you're facing. 

Using obsolete technology at your healthcare facility

If you're struggling with medical staffing shortages at your company, it's a good idea to reconsider the technology you're using. 

Investing in updated healthcare IT technologies can increase efficiency for the staff members that you have. Better technology can also reduce stress for your staff members so that they're more likely to stick with your organization long term. 

Putting inadequate effort into workforce optimization regarding you medical staff

Workforce optimization can go a long way in improving the situation when you're dealing with staffing shortages.

With workforce optimization, you can pinpoint the exact areas where your workforce is lacking. You can then develop strategies to improve productivity and make it so that your current staff members can boost their effectiveness while on the job and thereby make up for any staffing shortages.

Not working with medical staffing agencies to fill vacancies

There are a lot of resources out there that can help healthcare facilities to keep up with staffing demands. Medical staffing agencies are one of the best resources out there that healthcare facilities can use to make sure that they have adequate personnel on staff to ensure effective patient care.

Failing to do your own training where possible

For entry-level healthcare positions, you may be able to offer some on-the-job training. Training at your facility rather than insisting on hiring experienced employees who have already undergone training can make it easier to keep your facility adequately staffed. 

Staff members will appreciate it if you give them an opportunity to get their foot in the door of the medical industry. They therefore may be more likely to stick with your company longer to improve your employee retention. 

Being unaware of the potentials of outsourcing for your medical organization

Although many medical staffing positions need to be filled by in-house personnel, there are other routine tasks at your organization that you may be able to outsource.

For example, tasks like clinical documentation and medical billing can often be outsourced to reduce the labor requirements of your healthcare organization. 

Not promoting from within

For higher level positions at your healthcare facilities, promoting from within can make it easier to fill open positions. You know more about staff members who fill your higher level positions when you hire them to fill those positions after they have already spent a fair amount of time with your organization. 

Promoting from within ensures that the staff members who are filling higher level positions have a more thorough familiarity with your healthcare organization.

Putting inadequate emphasis on value-based care at your healthcare institution

At many healthcare organizations, too much emphasis is put on fee-for-service care as opposed to value-based care. With value-based care, organizations avoid giving superfluous treatments to patients that don't improve their health but waste patients' time and staff member resources.

Learn how making tweaks at your organization to focus on value-based care can help you to keep up with staffing demands at your facilities. 

Contact a medical staffing agency near you to learn more.