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Recruiting secret: Hospital offers convenient housing for its employees

By Jeannie on May 18, 2012 in Featured, Healthcare Staffing, Healthcare Staffing Websites

Having trouble recruiting hospital staff? This might be your solution…

iStock 000000793722XSmall Recruiting secret: Hospital offers convenient housing for its employees

Hospital staff in the Orlando area spend an average of 45 mins. in traffic to and from work.

One Orlando hospital sold part of their land to a local developer to build convenient, nearby housing for hospital staff. The building developer agreed to offer hospital employees a three-month preferred lease option before the apartments are made available to the public. Even when the apartments are all rented, hospital employees will be bumped to the top of the waiting list.

The convenience, safety and affordability of the housing are very appealing reasons for healthcare travelers to work for this facility. The Florida hospital views this as a prized asset, especially when recruiting from out of state.

Currently, traveling staff are forced to live in the suburbs due to unaffordable rent costs. Employees living in these areas spend an average of 45 minutes in Orlando’s traffic to and from work. However, living in the new residences will only require a 5 minute walk commute. Upon proposal of the project, the hospital requested that 80% of the apartments would be affordable for families earning between 40,000 and $70,000.

The apartment complex is just the beginning to the campus’s Health Village concept, which will include shops, restaurants, a swimming pool, fitness facility, garage parking and even electric cars that can be rented by the hour. A rail commuter station will also be built near the hospital for easy access to downtown Orlando. Source: Health Leaders Media.

Do you think inconvenient housing is a deterrent for many healthcare professionals?

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?

By Jeff on Dec 14, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing

A controversial article within the healthcare staffing industry by the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, appeared in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Dec. 6th. The article, Temp Firms a Magnet for Unfit Nurses, discusses the quality, or lack thereof, of nurses working through staffing firms. It appears to be just one of many articles dealing with problems that the state of California is having with healthcare in general and nurses in particular by journalists Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber.

When I read the article, which discusses several nurses who make absolutely unacceptable decisions on the job and have inexcusable records for being hired in the first place, my opinion is that a few bad apples are ruining it for everyone. The nurses discussed in the article are repeatedly recycled through temporary staffing companies who do not perform background checks on them or even bother to call their references.

The article applies a broad brush to temporary nurses in general as not being as qualified as staff nurses, with no reference to research that proves otherwise. Unfortunately, it does not acknowledge that many temporary nurses are full-time at times in their careers or even while working as a temp nurse at another hospital. Are there some bad nurses who travel or work per diem? Sure. Just like there are bad nurses who work full-time.

Where I really have trouble with the story is in the way it places all the blame on the staffing agencies, which do deserve their share of the blame, but what about the nurses themselves, who lie and forge documents to get jobs. And the hospitals that use companies without auditing them themselves. The industry is referred to as a ‘Wild West” with little, but increasing regulation, which is really where the problem lies. The good healthcare staffing companies regulate themselves by either being Joint Commission certified, belonging to NATHO - National Association of Travel Healthcare Organizations or both. They have extensive on-boarding processes that include background checks from independent third party vendors, reference checks, drug screenings, skills assessments, follow-up reviews from the client hospital, etc. And if a nurse does come back with serious issues they are investigated and added to ‘Do Not Use” lists.

Sadly it is the bad companies that skimp on these procedures that the unfit nurses are looking for. Nurses with some of the issues discussed in the article are not going to work with companies they know have strict application processes.

Clearly the article points to a problem and demonstrates a need for more centralized data that can spot these nurses faster for both nurse staffing agencies and hospitals alike. This discussion is covered very well during this radio interview with the two authors of the article and Michael Weinholtz, board member of the American Staffing Association and President and CEO of CHG Healthcare Services.

What are your thoughts?

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 travel healthcare staff actually save you money?

By Jeff on Apr 17, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing

Last week Jason Lander over at Staffing Robot posted about the “Top 10 reasons to use temporary healthcare professionals.” The list was very thorough, though I did comment that I would add improved patient care and safety to the list. What struck me was the timing of the post. We had just published a white paper and staffing calculator for our client hospitals that addressed many of these same issues, especially the morale of the perm nursing staff and and the hidden cost savings that occur when units are properly staffed.

It looks like there is still a lot of education that still needs done on the value of supplemental staff for hospitals. Although the focus of the white paper was on nursing, many of the same principles apply to allied health professionals like PT/OT, Imaging and Lab techs and therapists. Here is a link to download our nursing staff value calculator and white paper if you are interested.

Including travelers as a valued part of your healthcare staff

By Bret on Oct 28, 2008 in Featured

A recent article at HealthLeaders Media discussed the importance of treating travelling healthcare staff members the same as permanent staff. Glendive Medical Center in Montana has bought in to this philosophy and are seeing results.

Prior to this shift in their employee relations, they had struggled to get their travelers to buy in to their methodologies and hospital mission. Since their facility relied heavily on travelers and other temporary contract workers, they realized that they needed to try a different approach if they were going to improve the quality of care. They recognized that they had previously treated their travelers as outsiders.

It was at that point they decided to enhance the relationship with their travelers. This new strategy didn’t require much effort or formal statements. They simply emphasized inclusion. As they state, “make them part of the family.”

Travelers are sometimes viewed as uncommitted due to the fact that they work their 13 week contract and move on to the next assignment. But when it comes down to it, they’re really no different than your permanent staff. They strive to work in an environment where their skills can make a difference and they are treated as a valued part of the staff. Isn’t this what we all look for?