Teagan Kuruna, MPH, associate content director at Phreesia
The COVID-19 pandemic has exhausted healthcare providers and staff alike. And yet, patients still need care—and those who skipped medical visits over the past year and a half are trying to catch up now, adding to the pressures healthcare organizations face.
Tackling this new reality can be daunting, and the obvious solution might seem to be to continue hiring more staff. But for many healthcare organizations, that’s simply not a viable option. They’ve already had trouble filling non-clinical roles for years, citing challenges such as limited career growth potential in many roles and changing expectations from potential employees.
And now, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned that problem into a crisis. Because it’s not the only industry eager to add workers to its payrolls, healthcare finds itself in direct competition with other sectors. Industries like food service, hospitality and retail also have huge numbers of open positions—and they are raising wages to fill them. This means that your front-desk staff, whose skills can be applied in a variety of employment settings, can find higher-paying jobs in other sectors.
“Staff turnover is reaching new, unfortunate heights,” says Elizabeth Woodcock, medical practice and revenue cycle management expert. “The staffing crisis is not a short-term issue that can be overcome in six months. The result of COVID is that your staff can work for anyone, anywhere in the world, from home.”
Instead of hiring, healthcare organizations can forge ahead with a straightforward solution: Reduce manual workloads and improve staff efficiency through technology.
By automating time-consuming processes such as intake, consent management, payments and scheduling—and turning those tasks over to patients—medical practices and health systems can alleviate their hiring challenges and boost staff efficiency without adding new employees. Automating many tasks also can help ease employee burnout and increase retention by opening up staff time to concentrate on higher-value tasks, including focusing on the patient experience.
In fact, patients increasingly expect their healthcare providers to provide the same easy, flexible and convenient consumer experience they get in other services.
For example, adding two-way text messaging capabilities to your practice lets staff efficiently and quickly communicate with patients in the way they expect. Giving patients the ability to self-schedule their visits or integrating an appointment request form on your website is exactly the type of tech-enabled access that patients want. And making payments easier—by collecting copays during registration and letting patients set up their own payment plans, for instance—makes their experience even more patient-centered.
Automating and digitizing your front-desk processes can allow you to keep patients as your top priority while reducing staff burnout. Instead of worrying about how to get back to how things used to be, use technology to create a more efficient and modern healthcare organization. As Woodcock says, “’Staffing’ may never be the same.”
Learn how Phreesia can help you improve staff efficiency.
Kindred Hospitals: A Critical Level of Care
August 8th 2024Intensive Care Units in long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs) treat many of the same conditions that traditional ICUs treat but are designed to do so for a longer period of time. Not only is it possible for LTACHs to treat patients with these conditions but these specialized hospitals are also able to achieve lower readmission rates for more complex patients. In this article you will discover: · The top conditions treated at both traditional ICUs and LTACHs · Readmission rates of complex patients discharging from both settings · Characteristics of Kindred Hospitals’ LTACHs that allow them to provide exceptional critical care
Read More
The Future of Patient Engagement with Pharmacy: How Deeper Connections Benefit All Stakeholders
May 23rd 2024The vision for Outcomes is creating thriving communities with pharmacy at the center of care. With their extensive knowledge of medications and close interactions with patients, pharmacists are uniquely positioned to provide valuable medical services beyond simply dispensing prescriptions. Pharmacists are one of the most trusted and accessible professionals in healthcare. Outcomes brings together capabilities to elevate and enable them to practice at the top of their license. This partnership enables meaningful connections across payers to drive performance metrics and reduce total cost of care.
Read More
2023 Drug Trend Report - Xevant
May 16th 2024To effectively navigate the changing pharmacy landscape and maintain a robust, cost-effective pharmacy benefit, you must understand the forces behind rising drug trend. What’s driving your costs and what can you do about it? As a leader in the PBM analytics space, we offer a unique perspective on pivotal trend drivers. Here’s what our comprehensive analysis revealed: -A surge in utilization rates across specialty and non-specialty drugs, magnified by anti-obesity therapies -Financial strain imposed by anti-inflammatory biologics and the yet-to-be-fulfilled -promise of biosimilar savings -Persistent price inflation driving higher costs year over year
Read More