‘Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is a process and working together is Success’ – Henry Ford
As the best and most successful of us out there will pointedly tell you, their success largely stems from going to great lengths to create a strong, consistent, dynamic long term team to help take their visionary goals to fruition. It’s no different for healthcare professionals. Staffing problems in healthcare are aplenty. Did you know that according to HealthManagement.org, employee turnover in healthcare is 30% higher than in other industries!
Staffing challenges must be addressed to bring in an ideal and long term team. The team must be just as capable and efficient, if not more, than the practitioner. They must align to the ideology of the chiropractor and be confident and empowered to make important decisions when required. With such a team to support the practitioner, the practice has the potential to be unstoppable.
Here’s FIVE key Staffing tips to overcome healthcare staffing challenges :
- Keep em Satisfied : A practitioner’s levels of efficiency and excellence would be in direct proportion to the morale of the team employed. Specifically, it means how positive or negative the employees feel about their jobs. An easy way to discover levels of satisfaction is to take a simple employee survey. With pertinent questions regarding the work itself, working conditions, quality of supervision, relationship with co-workers, opportunity for growth and advancement and perceived adequacy of pay.
Recording, evaluating and analysing this information can help the practitioner make well informed decisions on how to improve employee satisfaction and in turn lead to better organisational functioning and higher patient satisfaction levels too! - Build Practical, Flexible Scheduling Processes – The lion’s share of staffing problems in healthcare practices stem from inflexible scheduling systems. Employees who are bound to long working hours and not having the flexibility to adjust working hours when really required without attracting some sort of sanctions, are prone to feeling dissatisfied. Solutions to this include using a healthcare scheduling application, educating and training employees on how to navigate changes and finally, cultivating an environment of trust, honesty and transparency.
- Recognize Right Talent – Hiring the wrong person can be a seriously costly and messy mistake to make that would only compound staffing challenges. As famously quoted, “Find the Right People, not the Best People”. In order to do that, it is prudent to understand the role being employed for in detail and assess what the practice’s needs really are. What is the practice’s mission and values ? What kind of mindset is expected of the individual to be hired? Look into these questions deeply and compare potential candidates with this in mind.
- Prepare to Hire – Once the above step is completed, the next thing to do would be to develop detailed job descriptions for the positions needed to be filled. An exhaustive job description may include expected work outcomes, work related processes, work environment and most importantly, credentials, qualifications and other attributes the employee is envisioned to possess in order to perform the work in a satisfactory manner.
- Outsource Documentation – A wise way to sidestep healthcare staffing challenges is to outsource certain positions. It can be strenuous to hire and retain well qualified transcriptionists, coders and billing specialists. Subscribing for medical transcription services can be a resource saver for the practice. The benefits of taking such a service are – Accurate and efficient reports and summaries, ease of information access and finally and most crucially, freeing the practitioner’s precious time and energy!
There you have it! The above mentioned tips are simple, proven and effective to help tackle staffing problems in healthcare.
Does your practice struggle overcome its staffing challenges ? Do you find good help hard to find and ever harder to retain?
If so, go right ahead and book a complimentary consultation call for the MIND, BODY, BUSINESS program !