How to Cultivate a Strong Hospital-MSP Partnership

Featured, Hospital Management

Your healthcare organization has just teamed up with a managed service provider. So, now what? To enjoy a successful partnership with your MSP, there are a few things you should consider:

Get the right people in the room

Engaged hospital executives are necessary for a successful partnership. And MSP National Account Executive Rory Audino believes collaboration is the first step to gaining that trust.

“There are a lot of stakeholders in the staffing process,” Rory said. “Ideally, we want to get one-on-one time with these individuals to identify their pain points in the current state and collaborate with them to achieve a better, future state.”

With that in mind, healthcare leaders should create a project team to help their MSP partner map out the entire staffing process. Rory notes this team should include stakeholders in both clinical and non-clinical departments, such as human resources, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.

Write down your goals

What are your objectives? And how does your healthcare organization define success? Without answers to these questions, it can be hard for both parties to create a shared vision. To avoid such pitfalls, Rory suggested writing key performance metrics, such as staff quality, time-to-fill rates, assignment completion rates, and fair market rates into the contract. Rory also noted there is something of an equation for achieving these metrics.

“On one side, you have to focus on candidate quality and ensuring the best job fit,” Rory said.  “On the other side, there’s fair market rates. You have to strike a fine line between what’s affordable for the hospital and what’s attractive to the candidates. When done right, this equation equals a low time-to-fill rate and ideal candidates.”

However, Rory believes having a strong relationship with the hospital matters the most.

“For us, quality is metric number one,” Rory said. “We aren’t interested in having a process that only solves 60 percent of your staffing problems. We want to build a relationship that lasts.”

Keep communication channels open

Like any quality relationship, two-way communication is vital. This is especially true when developing a strong partnership with your MSP, Rory explained.

“I think it’s important to be realistic about the challenges you’re going to face,” Rory said. “We like to tell our hospital partners, ‘Things might not always go the way you planned, but we’ll always be there for you and fix it together.’”

Rory has also found frequent two-way communication leads to fewer surprises and a successful hospital -MSP relationship. 

“To me, success means we’ll be celebrating that partnership 10 years down the road,” Rory said.