VISTA Workforce Optimization

Across all types of healthcare organizations, clinician vacancies have both direct and indirect costs. For hospitals and medical practices, physician vacancies can impact a variety of areas, including revenue, patient experience, quality of care and more. In this post, we will explore all the direct and indirect costs of these vacancies in depth. 

Cold and flu season puts a strain on every organization that requires staff in order to operate. Hospital and healthcare facilities feel this strain more than most. Sick healthcare workers are not only less efficient than well ones, but can also put vulnerable patients at risk.

Your healthcare facility, physicians, and patients all rely on the establishment of a workforce optimization strategy. 

Through this planning process, it is possible to ensure you always have optimal staff numbers needed to run your facility and care for your patients.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Locum tenens can help maintain your continuity of coverage while preserving your revenue stream. 

• 94% of healthcare facility managers hired locum tenens providers, including NPs and PAs, within the past year
• 80% of healthcare facility managers rate locum tenens providers as worth the cost
• 75% of healthcare facility managers use locum tenens providers during permanent search or to address turnover
• 50% of healthcare facility recruiters' time is spent on the management and utilization of locum tenens providers while performing a permanent search
• 10% of healthcare facility managers use locum tenens conversions to fill full-time openings

As an in-house recruiter, your organization relies on you to find candidates that meet certain qualifications and match your practice culture. On the national landscape, recruiters report a continued increase in the number of open requisitions each year. The mounting openings to a large degree are due to increased patient panels, augmented service markets (a byproduct of mergers and acquisitions), physician turnover, and a growing population of retiring physicians. Pressured timelines combined with a highly competitive staffing market, shallow candidate pools, and candidate ghosting*, for many of us, have sprouted a gray hair or two. Our hope is to provide renewed awareness on approaches and insight that will contribute to your continued success. With more than 50 years of collective recruitment experience, we have unveiled five key points to help you recruit more physicians now!

5 Questions You Need to Ask…

Recruiting provider talent remains a huge challenge for healthcare systems, both large and small. The recruitment process can be laborious: reviewing CVs, coordinating interviews and site visits for candidates, and negotiating contracts and salaries are time-consuming, often leaving departments short-staffed and disrupting revenue streams. That's why more and more healthcare groups are partnering with staffing companies, which can provide provider coverage in the interim, allowing recruiters the time to find the right providers for their organization.

With the arrival of summer comes vacations and the need for staffing openings to be temporarily filled. Preparation for these openings will help smooth the transition for you and your staff.