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What is your hospital doing to keep nurses happy?

By Jeannie on Jan 20, 2012 in Featured, Healthcare Staffing, Patient Experience, Travel Nurses, Working with Staffing Vendors

With the current nurse shortage, it’s no surprise that hospitals should be doing all they can to keep their nurses happy.

Maintaining an environment where the nurse wants to work is critical for not only nurse retention, but also patient quality. The overall stress accompanied by an uncomfortable and disrespectful work environment can send nurses running for the door. The key is finding out what makes nurses happy enough to stay.

The Nursing Organizations Alliance developed a set of principles to help hospitals and other health care entities create positive work environments. More than 40 nurse organizations have endorsed these principles. So, what are you doing to keep your nurses happy?

A good nurse job description is the main ingredient in finding the perfect match

By Jeff on Sep 13, 2011 in Healthcare Staffing, Travel Nurses, Working with Staffing Vendors

If you are using a Vendor Management System (VMS) to manage your nurse staffing needs don’t forget one of the main ingredients in hiring qualified nurses, finding the perfect (or as close as you can get) match. When working with a VMS this can be difficult because you are most likely dealing with the need to hire a lot of nurses and through most VMSs, travel nursing companies are not able to talk to you directly about your needs.

Without this kind of open communication with staffing agencies it is of utmost importance that you write thorough and detailed job descriptions. If this is overlooked and a bad match is made then the ramifications can be costly and time consuming. You may luck out and the nurse is a rock star, however you may find that she is just not a good fit, so much so that she has to be let go. I’m sure you already know or can imagine what kind of headache results from that scenario.

So the best way to get the most out of any VMS you work with is to take the time to create excellent job descriptions. Here are some resources to help you do that:

How to avoid being oversold on a travel nurse

By Jeff on Oct 23, 2010 in Hospital Staffing, Working with Staffing Vendors

One common complaint that hospitals tend to have with travel nursing companies is the “salesman” approach.

What does that mean?

It is what occurs when a travel nursing recruiter or client manager over-promises on a nurse’s fit for the position and the nurse does not live up to the expectations.

Unfortunately, once this happens with one or two companies it is easy to believe that this is what all companies will do.

Trusting that a travel nursing company is going to deliver quality candidates is vitally important to ensure good patient care at your hospital. This is particularly true if using travelers is part of your staffing strategy on a regular basis. So if this is your experience, here are some previous posts I have written that will give you some more background on and help you do more research into the process that the companies use to evaluate the qualifications of their travelers and what they do to determine they are a good fit at your hospital.

What has your experience been?

How nurse managers can improve a hospital's use of travel nurses

By Jeff on Aug 28, 2010 in Travel Nurses, Working with Staffing Vendors

You are used to giving feedback to your full-time nurse staff, but how often are you giving your travel nurses or travel nursing companies feedback? If you already do, that is great, but if not, it may be something you should look at instituting at your hospital. There are benefits for all three if you do.

Benefit of feedback for the travel nurse

Even though the time a traveler is at your hospital may be as short as 8-13 weeks, that doesn’t mean feedback is not important to her. Many times a travel nurse has decided to pursue a travel career because she wants to become a better nurse and learn new skills. One of the best ways to do that is to get feedback from a variety of managers with different backgrounds who can give constructive advice. It will also help her feel more comfortable in her role and if she is living up to your expectations, which will make her a better nurse.

Even though the time a traveler is at your hospital may be as short as 8-13 weeks, that doesn’t mean feedback is not important to her.

Benefit of feedback for the hospital

It will also help you get the most out of travel nurses at your unit and the travel nursing companies you work with. Feedback given at the right times during an assignment can also be a huge boost to the travel nurses performance, particularly if there are any areas she needs to improve in. Identifying a nurse’s weaknesses and strengths early in the assignment is going to make you better able to utilize her during her time with your hospital. You can give this feedback on an informal basis or in a formal program, but the key is to make sure it happens in a shorter time-frame than it would with a perm nurse.

You may even want to consider doing 30-day peer review of a travel nurse. That way you can see what the perm nurses on your staff think of her performance as well and find out if there are any issues you were unaware of.

Keeping record of these reviews and feedback is also a great way to create a list of nurses you may want to hire full-time one day or bring back when another travel need arises.

Benefit of feedback for the travel nursing company

Finally, it is important that you share with the nurse’s travel nursing company. First, this will make sure that they know if there are any performance problems they need to address or help the traveler with. Second, it will help them learn what traits and skills you need or value most in the nurses you have on staff and can help them find other similar nurses in the future.

Here is a sample schedule you could follow

7 days in - Go over initial performance impressions and address any issues that look like they may become a problem down the road if not addressed early. This is also a good place to answer any questions she may need to ask.

30 days in – Have your perm nurses take part in a peer review of the travel nurse to get a different point of view of the nurse.

90 days in – Do a post assignment feedback session that you will be able to provide to your travel nursing company and let the nurse know what her strengths are what she needs to improve on for her next assignment.

Here are some tools for putting together your evaluations: Strategies for Nurse Managers

Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company's Cost

By Jeff on Jun 11, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Featured, Healthcare Staffing, Hospital Staffing, Working with Staffing Vendors

Of course no evaluation of healthcare staffing companies would be complete without a look at cost. However, we have saved cost for last because it is really a combination of the first two factors the quality of the candidate and the system of its delivery.

Obviously cost is a complicated and may be more than we should tackle in a single post, but we will give it a shot. First off though we will assume that you are already past the mindset that “travel nurses cost too much”. The cost of temporary healthcare staff is not expensive compared to what it costs to staff your hospital with a permanent staff member, you can learn more in this post about Can travel healthcare staff actually save you money? Sure there are times when it makes to use travelers and times when you flat out don’t need them, in this case we will assume you have made the decision that you do need them and you are merely comparing one travel nursing company to another.

There are some things you need to consider when looking at a cost. There is obviously not a lot of information available on individual companies policy towards determining bill rates so this will be a fairly generic overview, but it should give you a few things to consider when you are evaluating travel nursing companies costs.

Areas of Expense Affecting Healthcare Staffing Company’s Bill Rates

First remember that there are a lot of factors that go into determining bill rates and they will vary from company to company, but some of the most common areas of expense affecting bill rates are:

Rate of pay
Vacations, holidays
Worker’s compensation
Unemployment
Social security (FICA)
federal state and local taxes
Bookkeeping costs
Recruiting
Advertising
OSHA bloodborne training
HIPAA training, drug screens
Hep-B screen testing
Malpractice insurance
Housing
Other traveler benefits
Costs of hospital’s protocols (i.e. screening requirements and background checks required by the hospital.
The length of the contract
The number of guaranteed hours
VMS involvement

Considerations When Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company’s Bill Rates

Based on these somewhat standard items that you need to keep in mind, you then need to look at the service you receive from the travel nursing or the travel allied health company and the quality of candidates from the point of view of what you are willing to pay for them.

So in conjunction with cost you need to consider the importance you place on the following areas:

Quality of candidates
Thoroughness of screening processes
Good communication with the nurse by the staffing company
The level of communication you want with the staffing company (not the VMS)
Customer service you want from the staffing company

Conclusion about Evaluating Healthcare Staffing Company’s Bill Rates

All of these areas are indirectly tied to the bill rates of the healthcare staffing company. For you HR and nurse managers making the decisions, the difference may be seen in a few dollars difference per hour either way, but can have bigger impacts than that. The question is, is that difference worth lower quality candidates or not having direct contact with the staffing company (both areas we discussed in the previous two posts in this series)? Or conversely is that extra service really worth the greater expense?

Conclusion about Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company’s Processes

The key thing to remember when evaluating a healthcare staffing company to work with is to think of your needs and what is going to be the best fit for your hospital. Just because a company has a slick sales presentation or is the biggest doesn’t mean they are going to be the best fit for your facility. There are a lot of factors that going into finding that right partnership for you and your hospital.

Evaluating a Company's Nursing and Allied Health Candidates

By Jeff on May 21, 2010 in Healthcare Hiring, Healthcare Staffing, Hospital Staffing, Working with Staffing Vendors

The quality and quantity of nursing and allied health candidates that a staffing company provide is really the core of their business and is one of the main reasons you should be considering working with a staffing company in the first place. There are four key components to this: Nursing and Allied Health Candidate Pool Size, Recruiting Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals, Screening Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals and Speed in Finding Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals for Your Hospital.

Nursing and Allied Health Candidate Pool Size

First you want to look at how many nurses and other healthcare providers they have in their database. It does not do you much good to sign on to work with a company, no matter how low their prices or how friendly they seem, if they don’t have the candidates to meet y our needs. Even more specifically you will want to find out how many candidates they have licensed in your area and working in the specialties you need most.

Recruiting Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals

Next you want to find out how they attract new nurses and therapists to work for them. You want to know that they are an attractive option for the best candidates out there. Think of them like a college sports team, often the best schools get the best student-athletes and in turn put the best teams out on the field. Travel nursing companies or travel therapy companies function basically the same way. The best nurses, for example, know that they are in higher demand and thus are going to go with the company that treats them best, whether for that nurse it is pay, relationship with recruiter or customer service. That’s why you want to work with companies with good reputations among the travelers themselves and that are always actively seeking new candidates and building their brand among them.

Screening Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals

The next factor you will want to look at is what qualification process goes on to ensure that your hospital only gets qualified and pre-screened candidates that you feel comfortable providing patient care at your facility. One easy way to do this is to make sure they are Joint Commission certified, which means that they have been evaluated by the largest standards-setting and accrediting body in healthcare and have earned the Gold Seal of Approval™ . This demonstrates that they are dedicated to providing qualified healthcare staff able to deliver high-quality patient care.

Next you want to ask specifics about their application and screening process. The basics of a good screening process include a thorough background check, immunizations, drug screening, skills evaluation, personal interviews and references. If any of these things are missing from a company’s screening process you should reconsider if they are going to provide you with the best candidates.

Speed in Finding Travel Nurses and Allied Health Professionals for Your Hospital

Another important factor in evaluating travel nursing or travel therapy companies for your facility is their response time in getting you the candidates you need. Again it does not do your hospital any good to work with a staffing company that boasts thousands of candidates, but takes a week to send you someone. You should expect a company to provide you with qualified candidates in the speed you need whether it is a couple of days or months in advance.

Conclusion about Evaluating a Company’s Nursing and Allied Health Candidates

Being thorough in evaluating the quality of candidates of a travel nursing or travel therapy company is an important part of the patient care your hospital provides so take the time to do it right and ask the right questions and lots of them. In the next post in this series we will look at Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company’s Processes.

Why should I use one company over another to meet my healthcare staffing needs?

By Jeff on May 14, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Featured, Healthcare Staffing, Hospital Staffing, Working with Staffing Vendors

There are a lot of factors to look at when it comes to determining what travel nursing company you think will meet the needs of your hospital best. We looked at these partially earlier in two posts, one about evaluate the healthcare staffing vendors and another about healthcare staffing providers financially stability, but now we will take a look at how to compare companies when you are looking for new ones to work with.

Several factors need consideration when working with individual healthcare staffing companies, but they all basically center on their ability to provide you with what you need, qualified and caring nurses or allied health professionals at a cost that provides value to your hospital and patients.

Over the next three weeks we will be looking at three important parts of this evaluation:

Evaluating a Company’s Nursing and Allied Health Candidates
Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company’s Processes
Evaluating a Healthcare Staffing Company’s Cost

Are your healthcare staffing providers financially stable?

By Jeff on Apr 02, 2010 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Working with Staffing Vendors

Awhile ago we looked at how to evaluate the healthcare staffing vendors you work with so you can make sure you can working with the best ones and getting the most value out of them. Well, in light of recent news of a major healthcare staffing company reporting that it may have to file for bankruptcy it made me think of one other thing you need to look at when evaluating travel nursing or travel allied companies, their financial stability.

The last thing you want to do is to become heavily dependent on one company only to have that company go out of business and leave you with the hassle of dealing with temporary nurses, therapists or techs who no longer have a company behind them. In addition if this were to happen to a company you were working with you may find yourself suddenly either scrambling to find a new healthcare staffing company or forced to working with an unfamiliar company that bought out your contingent staffing company.

This is not to say that you should only work with “big” travel nursing or travel therapy companies. Because being bigger does not necessarily mean more stable. Instead you need take a closer look at their financial standing. Here is a basic list of some of the actions you can take when you are looking at new companies to staff your hospital or skilled nursing facility:

If they are publicly traded visit their corporate website and check out their annual reports to see their balance sheet
If they are a private company look for recognized signs of growth like Inc 500 awards or fastest growing industry and area awards
See how many employees they have, it needs to be large enough to handle things like billing, doing background and reference checks and providing your hospital with the support it needs
Find out how long the travel nursing or travel therapy company has been in existence
Find out if they ever have payroll issues
Ask for references from other hospitals and healthcare facilities they work with

What about you? Do you have any other questions you ask to gauge the stability of a contingent staffing company?