As Baby Boomers continue to age and require more care, healthcare facilities are responding by increasing their use of contingent clinicians. However, as a contingent workforce grows in size, so too can labor costs. Accordingly, healthcare leaders are searching for ways to reduce contingent labor spend and increase efficiency without impacting patient care. Sound familiar? If so, consider these four tactics you can use to control your facility’s contingent labor costs:
- Invest in a sound recruitment strategy: Are you putting your best foot forward when it comes to recruitment? To remain competitive in this job seeker’s market, many healthcare facilities are joining forces with a managed service provider. That’s because they’ve found that a managed service provider can help them quickly recruit quality candidates and deliver cost savings.
- Improve your hiring process: Turnover is a growing concern among healthcare leaders and for good reason — it costs on average $82,000 to replace a nurse. However, when you find the right person for the job the first time, you naturally reduce turnover. While that’s not an easy task in this era of clinician shortages, a managed service provider can help you find candidates who are aligned with your facility’s culture and goals. How? An MSP should have a team of healthcare professionals who will pre-screen and interview candidates for you, so you can find the right clinicians for your facility, save time, and reduce costly turnover rates.
- Optimize your staff: Too often, healthcare facilities don’t keep track of their contingent labor use, and that can be an expensive mistake. Without a tracking system in place, many healthcare leaders are forced to be reactive and pay crisis rates for their contingent clinicians. Conversely, a managed service provider will keep your team informed on the fair market rate in your region and ensure that you always have the optimum staffing levels needed to provide quality patient care. An MSP should also have a team of professionals who can offer you real-time visibility into your facility’s contingent labor trends, so you can proactively forecast your staffing needs.
- Streamline your billing process: Thanks to a complex billing process where each staffing agency has a different bill rate, medical facilities must manage a blizzard of invoices each time they utilize contingent labor. As a result, many healthcare facilities may not realize they are paying inflated rates for their contingent workforce. However, a managed service provider can offer you consolidated billing and market intelligence, so you can reduce your overall contingent labor spend.
Healthcare facilities should reevaluate their approach to staffing in an effort to reduce their overall labor spend. Contact Medical Solutions Plus and find out how your facility can gain more control over your contingent staffing costs today.