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Why would a healthcare professional want to work on a temporary basis?

By Jeff on Jul 02, 2010 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Hospital Staffing

There is a misconception out there at times that a nurse may be interested in travel assignments because she could not cut it in a permanent position.

In reality, not only has research shown that temporary nurses are as qualified if not more so than permanent nurses, but there are also other reasons they may be interested in a temporary assignment, including:

Looking for more flexiblitiy in there job opportunities
Enjoy seeing and experiencing different parts of the country
Adding to their clinical skills set
Building their resume by working at a variety of hospitals of varying size and focus
Going through changes in their life
Entering a new phase in their career

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.

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.

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 healthcare staffing companies a haven for bad nurses? Follow-up.

By Jeff on Dec 23, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

In my last post I talked about an article in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Dec. 6th called, Temp Firms a Magnet for Unfit Nurses, that discussed the quality, or lack of it, of nurses working through staffing firms. My point in my last post was that the article placed a lot of the blame on the staffing agencies and not the nurses themselves or hospitals that don’t check on the agencies they work with. I also talked about research that showed that temporary nurses are as, if not more, qualified than permanent nurses. But one area I did not fully address was what could be done about it.

Well in a recent article titled “Union: Healthy Environments, Better Orientation Can Solve Temp Nurse Issue” at HealthLeadersMedia, Media Rebecca Hendren discussed the article with some nurse executives from the new National Nurses United union who brought up some great points in response to the Los Angeles article including:

Acknowledging that in some circumstances travel nurses can be a real blessing for hospitals, but focus should still be on building a stable long-term workforce
Not supporting a national nurse registry and instead letting the state associations and licensing boards handle it
Illustrates a need to focus on a healthy working environment to improve retention and recruitment of permanent nurses, which in turn will reduce the need for temporary and travel nurses
Better orientation of travel nurses is important because even a good nurse who does not know the system and procedures of her new hospital will have a hard time with little orientation
California’s nurse to patient ratio had little to do with the problem and in fact has brought more nurses back to work in the state

These points really make me think about travel nursing orientation, and the role it plays in the overall quality of healthcare provided by travel nurses and in the experience of the travel nurses themselves. Stay tuned for a post dedicated to it.

Demystifying healthcare staffing: How can hospitals make sure they are staffed appropriately in a nursing shortage?

By Jeff on Dec 04, 2009 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Featured, Hospital Staffing

When it comes to staffing your hospital it important that you have a plan in place. You want to make sure that you have enough nurses in place to deal with things like seasonal fluctuations, the opening of new units or wings, unexpected and expected staff vacancies and illnesses just to name a few. That part you already know, the hard part is how you develop that plan.

For starters it needs to be a plan that takes of long-term and short-term staffing shortages. Like anything in life it is easier to plan for something if you know what to expect, which is why being able to look at some historical factors to predict just what your staffing needs are going to be is an important first step of creating a plan to make sure your unit always has a safe level of nurses for the number of patients you are going to have. Some factors to include in this are:

Your hospitals past census levels
Your staffing budget
Your accepted nurse to patient ratios

Conversely one thing you want to avoid is being overstaffed because it can be very costly to a hospital on a tight budget. Ultimately you want a plan that at least helps your unit break even, but even better you want it to help your hospital make money.

So when you look at staffing your hospital or unit, temporary staffing can be a good part of your staffing plan. You will often hear from the C-Level when money gets tight that temporary staff is one of the most costly budget items and easiest to get rid of, but if the use of travel nurses is part of a plan, not a quick reaction to unexpected census changes then they should not be seen as an expense, but as a revenue generator. A few factors to keep in mind when looking at the cost of temporary nurse staff as part of your staffing plan are:

How many patients are you not seeing because your nurse numbers are too low?
What is your average revenue per patient?
What percent of your FTEs are being covered by internal float pools and how long will that last?
What are average nurse turnover rates?
How much are your recruiting cost for a full-time staff?
What is your annual salary for a full-time nurse?

When you put together your staffing plan don’t just look at the immediate weigh what your nurse needs will be through the course of the year and determine the times when you will need both full-time staff and temporary (travel or per diem) staff. Not only will you be able to ease the burden on your full-time staff, plan for the temporary staff’s orientation better, help your hospital make more money and most importantly, treat more patients.

Demystifying healthcare staffing

By Jeff on Oct 16, 2009 in Demystifying healthcare staffing, Featured, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing

Over the next several weeks we are going to be bringing you a new series that tackles some of the common questions about temporary healthcare staffing.

On the schedule right now are the following questions:

How can hospitals make sure they are staffed appropriately in a nursing shortage?
Why should I use one company over another to meet my healthcare staffing needs?
How do healthcare staffing companies recruit healthcare professionals?
How do healthcare staffing companies screen healthcare professionals?
How quickly can healthcare staffing companies find healthcare professionals for my hospital?
What is the first step I should to take if my hospital has staffing needs?
When should my hospital consider temporary staffing?
Why would a healthcare professional want to work on a temporary basis?
Can a hospital extend a temporary assignment? Or turn it into a permanent hire?
Whose responsibility is it to provide a temporary healthcare professional with living accommodations?
Whose responsibility is it to provide for a temporary healthcare professional’s liability insurance?
What types of nurse staffing do healthcare staffing companies provide?
What special skills or competencies do healthcare staffing companies require for travel nurses?
What about Vendor Management Services (VMS)?
Do healthcare staffing companies provide staffing for ambulatory surgery centers?
Do healthcare staffing companies help recruit permanent staff too?
Do healthcare staffing companies only provide temporary staffing to hospitals?
Can healthcare staffing companies provide staffing for home health needs?
What should I look for in a healthcare staffing company?
Isn’t temporary staff expensive?

Can temporary nurse staffing help in lean hospital management?

By Jeff on Sep 18, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing

A recent article in the USA Today talked about hospital CEOs’ efforts in cutting out wasteful spending to not only increase the efficiency and profitability of their hospitals but also help lower the cost of healthcare, an obviously hot topic right now.

It discussed waste in supplies and use of staff’s time and how some hospitals are reducing inefficiencies using Toyota’s lean management system and reducing costs in patient care by 25% in one example. In fact, experts weigh in and say that if all hospitals could do save similar amounts it would save $400 billion on Medicare and another $1.3 trillion on the non-Medicare side. Those are huge savings and really what industry couldn’t probably do the same by being more efficient?

It leads me to think about the role of temporary staff in running a lean hospital. Just like you wouldn’t want supplies to go to waste (like the article mentions) and would be able to save money by having supplies on demand, you wouldn’t want to be overstaffed when your patient level doesn’t call for it and conversely understaffed when your patient numbers have increased. Having nursing staff on demand could be a huge savings and, if approached right, a huge efficiency increase.

Industry research has shown that hospitals are reluctant to use contingent staffing and will usually often only use it as a last resort. And some of the reasons listed are, training and orientation, staff cohesiveness and high costs.

Those reservations are understandable, but if you approach staffing as a lean management item it may make sense to take a second look at each area of reservation and create systems to deal with each one to take advantage of the cost savings that travel nursing staff can provide instead of seeing them as obstacles to nursing and allied health staff on demand. This could help you create a better work environment for your nurses and other healthcare professionals and in turn care for your patients better. And what a competitive advantage for your hospital that would be.

This post made me think of a few more related topics so keep an eye out. And I would love to hear your thoughts too.