Recent staff shortage challenges have put financial pressure on the healthcare industry – less than two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Deirdre Ruttle, Chief Marketing Officer at InstaMed and Head of Healthcare Payments Marketing at J.P. Morgan, writes to these challenges faced by many healthcare organizations and gives three proven strategies on how to succeed and thrive in the years to come.
Read the full article, Talent Tuesday: 3 Proven Strategies to Survive Staff Shortages in Healthcare, on Health IT Answers. Below is an excerpt from the article.
For healthcare organizations, staffing shortages are compounding the severe financial impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Proven strategies can help reduce staff dependency and increase productivity to not only survive the staffing shortages but thrive in the future.
There are currently more open jobs in the U.S. than available workers to fill the positions. In May 2021, open jobs hit a record 9.2 million – only to reach more than 10 million open jobs two months later. Not only are the job openings increasing, but the length of time to fill a position is growing too. In fact, an open position can take 20 to 50 days to fill on average.
Staff shortages affect many industries. However, in healthcare, the labor shortage comes amid an ongoing pandemic that has already stretched finances to the breaking point. For 2021 alone, recent estimates put the income loss related to the pandemic at more than $50 billion dollars for hospitals and health systems – despite aid from the federal government. The additional costs for organizations related to the labor shortage, such as overtime for existing employees and training for new staff, only exacerbate these pandemic losses.