Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing Technology, Design & Marketing Blog

Top Healthcare Staffing Stories of 2009 and Predictions for 2010

Over the next few weeks both of my sons have birthdays and I plan on spending some down time with my family for the holidays. Therefore, this will be my last post until the new year.

I thought I'd use this post to highlight some of the big events that affected the healthcare staffing industry in 2009 as well as make a few predictions about the industry for 2010. (is it 'twenty-ten' or 'two thousand ten'?)

What the healthcare staffing industry looked like in 2009:

Major downturn in spending on healthcare temporary staff.

The biggest news in 2009 for the healthcare staffing industry was undoubtedly about the downturn in the economy. My second blog post ever was on the reasons hospitals were spending less on healthcare agency staff. The down turn in the economy even made people start asking the question: "is there still a nursing shortage?" From there, leading economists confirmed that not only was the economy bad but that it will take awhile for it to improve and return the healthcare staffing industry to pre-2009 levels. And finally, the Staffing Industry Analysts informed us that the nurse travel industry decreased by 44% this year and we saw this downturn reflected in the revenue loss reported by major public healthcare staffing companies.

Widespread adoption of healthcare vendor management.

In 2009 hospitals gave a big vote of confidence to vendor management as the preferred model for agency management. VMS has matured in the industry and delivered on its promise of saving hospitals both time and money on their staffing costs.

How healthcare reform will affect healthcare staffing.

The topic of how healthcare reform will affect healthcare staffing couldn't be avoided. Many debates about the pros and cons of healthcare reform occurred on my blog and many of us had the privilege of hearing former Senator Tom Daschle's view on healthcare reform at the healthcare staffing industry conference. AMN even produced results from a poll suggesting that hospital CEO's feel healthcare reform will benefit the healthcare staffing industry.

Technology VMS companies struggle.

Even though some healthcare vendor management technology companies thrived in 2009 as hospitals increased their adoption of VMS, many companies did not fair so well. A few healthcare VMS technology companies had to close their doors this year while some VMS companies struggled to pay their staffing agency partners. Additionally, some VMS companies found acquisition to be the best way to survive the turbulent year.

Increased use of social media.

2009 was the year that many hospitals and staffing agencies began to use social media. Many hospitals, such as Providence St. Vincents in Portland Oregon who found success with their 'pink glove dance video' that went viral, took full advantage of these tools. Some hospitals are still behind when it comes to social media while several hospitals are finding success with tools such as Twitter. Both healthcare staffing agencies and hospitals are now promoting and monitoring their brands online, as the online tools for brand promotion and management are starting to become more prevalent. I've even created some helpful tools for people to search for healthcare staffing industry information and follow companies in the healthcare staffing industry on Twitter.

As you can see, 2009 was a very eventful year for the healthcare staffing industry. So what will the next year bring?

My predictions for healthcare staffing in 2010:

More consolidation of staffing agencies and VMS companies.

After struggling through the economic downturn of the last 1.5 years many companies are now really feeling the effects. I see several staffing agencies closing their doors and many more acquisitions in 2010. I wouldn't be surprised if we even see some consolidation with some of the major players. In addition, I expect we'll see some more acquisitions of healthcare VMS companies.

Continued adoption of vendor management.

Hospitals will continue to choose vendor management for their agency management solution. As the rate of adoption continues to increase, I expect we'll see hospitals still choose vendor neutral healthcare vendor management companies over agency run managed service providers.

New technology players.

The industry has gotten a bit stale in terms of innovation and new technology options. In addition, we've seen a decent amount of consolidation of industry technology companies. Both of these facts suggest to me that new players will enter the market and hopefully they will bring with them some exciting and innovate technologies. As these players enter the healthcare staffing industry I expect we'll see more and more hospitals and healthcare staffing companies embracing technology to improve their staffing process. Stay tuned!

New marketing methods and opportunities.

As budgets tighten many hospitals and staffing agencies will look for more inexpensive and effective methods for marketing their services. Many more healthcare staffing organizations will turn to SEO/SEM and social media for company/brand promotion. 

The market will come back slowly. Kind of.

Even though there are some positive signs for the economy overall and there has been some slight improvements in the healthcare staffing industry I don't see anything that suggests we should get too excited. Earlier this week the Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) hosted a webinar about the economic outlook for 2010. Their predictions suggested that every industry will improve in 2010 - except healthcare staffing. In fact, they are predicting an overall decline of -1%. Therefore, unfortunately, I believe 2010 will still be a year of struggle. There will be some positive bumps here and there but we won't start fully pulling out of this down turn until early/mid 2011.

What are your predictions for healthcare staffing in 2010? Please share them here if you have any.

I wish you all well - happy holidays - happy new year. See you in 2010!

Unanimous Vote Creates Largest RN Union in U.S. History

This week saw the formation of the largest nursing union in the history of the U.S. The National Nurses United organizes over 150,000 nurses by uniting the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee with the Massachusetts Nursing Association and some members of the United American Nurses. The goal of the new union is to influence healthcare reform and improve the quality of care through efforts such as extending California’s patient ratio law to other states.

Dec. 7, 2009 - To standing cheers, delegates to the founding convention of the National Nurses United (NNU) today unanimously endorsed the creation of the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in U.S. history - and projected a major escalation in campaigns to expand union representation of nurses and an expanded voice in healthcare reform.

via www.nursezone.com

How Much Can VMS Really Save You?

Recently, the Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) put out a report on how much Vendor Management is saving companies that have adopted VMS as a management solution for contingent labor. According to the SIA "The results were based on findings from the 2009 Contingent Buyer Survey, conducted in September 2009, and reflect the opinions of buyer respondents from 171 large (1000+ employee) companies." Again, the report is only available to paying members of the SIA but I've listed some interesting findings from the report below.

What was most interesting to me about the report was how much the overall savings on contingent labor costs was underestimated by buyers that do not use VMS systems as an agency management solution.

According to the SIA report:

• Contingent workforce buyers who have not implemented VMS greatly underestimate the savings achieved by its adoption. Among such non-VMS users, the median projected savings from implementation was 5%--half the savings reported by those who had actually implemented VMS.
• Roughly a third of non-VMS users had “no idea” how much VMS would save; an additional 11% thought it would save neither time nor money, and 13% more thought it would save time but not money.
• The median estimated savings of contingent buyers working with a VMS model was 10%.
  
• Buyers reported that in the first year of implementation VMS saved a median of 10% of contingent workforce spend. However, buyer perception of savings varied widely, from 0% to over 25% savings.
  
• Almost all buyers—85% of them—thought VMS saved at least some significant percentage of spend (2% or more). About a quarter of buyers thought VMS saved 16% or more. Of the VMS users who did not think it saved money, almost all thought it saved time.

It's clear that the adoption of a vendor management model saves buyers of contingent labor both time and money. Depending on how it is implemented and the model chosen, the amount saved can vary.

Leapfrog Names 45 Best Hospitals in U.S. for 2009

Last week, the hospital watchdog group Leapfrog, whose mission is "to trigger giant leaps forward in the safety, quality and affordability of health care" released their list of the 45 best hospitals in the country.

According to Leapfrog, as well as adding new efficiency standards to its quality criteria, Information Technology use was a key component in the decision making process for determining these hospitals.  

"This year's class of top hospitals not only hits the mark in areas such as medication error prevention and preventing ICU deaths, but they also use their resources wisely, providing excellent and efficient outcomes for patients," said Leah Binder, CEO of The Leapfrog Group. "Regardless of what happens to healthcare reform, these hospitals are the future."

via Healthcare IT News.

How Will Google's Recent Announcements Affect Your SEO/SEM Campaigns?

Recently, Google announced two big changes that will have an affect on your SEO/SEM efforts. These changes include:

1. Page load speed
2. Personalized search

Page Load Speed:

Google recently announced that page speed will be a factor in page rank. To assist you with measuring this, Goolge has added a new feature in the site performance report under the “Labs” section of the tool. This report shows you how fast your site loads compared to other sites, as well as your sites performance over time, and provides you with tips on how to improve pages. Google also released a Firefox Add On called Page Speed that works with Firebug.

It may seem strange that Google is making page speed a criteria for page rank. However, page load times significantly contribute to user satisfaction. If a site is difficult to navigate or takes too long to retrieve information from it, the user experience is lessened and contributes to things such as increased bounce rates.

Additionally, Google is releasing a public DNS resolver. WTH is that right? It's basically a system that enables computers to read the name of your website URL. This process can contribute to some latency when loading pages so Google has created a system that will perform this process faster and increase your page load speed. They provide step by step instructions on how to switch your site to Google DNS servers if you're interested.

Personalized Search:

Google has always given its users the ability to record and save their search results and web traffic history. However, this is something you basically had to sign up for. Now, Google will personalize the search results of all users, regardless of whether you've signed up to use their previously existing personalization feature. Don't be too alarmed, you can opt-out completely of the feature if you choose.

It's interesting to think how this will affect SEO/SEM. Google will now change the page rank of content based on the end users preference. For example, if you search for 'books' online and consistently choose Powell's bookstore in Portland over Amazon, Google will learn this behavior and present Powell's to you ahead of Amazon in the returned search results. Even though Google claims that they will not change the page rank of all sites based on user preference, they won't fully disclose how much of a change they will make. So, in this example, even though Amazon's SEO/SEM tactics worked well in the past, they could start to lose their page rank on a user by user basis

What does this mean for your hospital's or healthcare staffing agency's marketing efforts?

First, if you haven't improved your website in at least the last 3 years - it's over due. Many web coding standards have changed in this time and not keeping up can put your website at risk for quickly becoming invisible to Google, having poor page speed performance and ultimately, decrease your page rank. Additionally, if your site is over bloated with images, text, Flash or design in general it might be a good idea to consider how to simplify things.

Second, I'm really curious to see how SEO/SEM professionals will respond to Google's personalized search changes. At some level I would assume that some new tactics will have to be employed. Personally, I would monitor my PPC campaigns a bit more closely over the next several months and see if anything is changing as well as consider doing some new keyword research in this same time frame. However, I wouldn't worry too much because I would also expect that certain things will stay the same. Most likely, effective PPC campaigns will remain effective and, most importantly, I'd always keep in mind that good amounts of quality content will produce positive results every time.

I welcome any thoughts, insight or experience anyone has on this topic.

Healthcare Reform & Healthcare Staffing: The Debate Continues

When I started my blog I promised myself I wouldn't talk about politics. However, since then, the heatlhcare debate went into full swing. This is an incredibly important issue to me and therefore, hard to ignore. I've blasted out several tweets and written some previous posts on why I think we need reform and what changes healthcare reform will bring to medical staffing. This has put me in the middle of a few debates with some people. 

This week I spent some time in Canada and wrote a post about how healthcare staffing works with our northern neighbors based on the conversations I had with some people on my trip. Gregg Dourgarian of TempWorks and the staffing blog - Staffing Talk wrote a rebuttal to this post. I was going to comment back on his blog but my response grew past an appropriate length for a comment. Therefore, below is my response to Gregg's post.

Of course it's easy to find examples of inefficiently run government healthcare systems as Gregg's post talks about. And yes, there are several stories of unsatisfied Canadian’s coming to the states for care, just as there are several stories of unsatisfied American’s who turn to Canada for care and cheaper medications. But lets be honest, you can also find the same inefficiencies in the private sector. It’s fair to say that both solutions are imperfect. However, according to the stats, the vast majority of Canadian's are satisfied with their system of care.

What about the current government run healthcare programs in this country such as Medicare, Medicaid and the V.A.? If you asked people receiving healthcare from one of these sources if they want their “government healthcare” taken away to be given private insurance instead I'd be surprised if you found any takers. When I left the military I received care from the V.A. for several years. It was some of the best, most efficient, cost effective care I’ve received to date. Everything I’ve done since with my private insurance has been a costly hassle.

In regard to my comment on "unnecessary for-profit medical centers." Often times, private hospitals, clinics and imaging centers will establish their entities next to competing medical centers creating a shortage of staff and a glut of beds or imaging equipment such as MRI’s. This equipment and these facilities are expensive. Their cost, as well as the increased demand now created for staff increases our country's overall healthcare costs. In addition, many of these private facilities get money from the government to start their new operations which comes from tax dollars.

These facilities are unnecessary in terms of needing more beds or care options in a particular area that already had a lack of demand. This situation has happened several times here in the Portland market causing situations of vacancy in the newly established medical center, as well as exacerbating those in the centers with which they’re competing. These new centers exist for one reason - to create profits for the individuals that establish them. While often times the newly established medical center offers lower prices and different medical options in order to compete, (thereby providing “the consumer with choice” as it was put in the Staffing Talk post), the greater cost of healthcare to society as a whole increases from these situations. You may personally save a $1 today but you’ll pay $5 tomorrow.

There's no question that having a privately run healthcare system in the U.S. has led to major advancements in healthcare and medicine for the world as a whole. However, what good are these innovations if the vast majority of Americans (or people in the world) can’t afford them and therefore, are denied access to them? I am a big believer in keeping things private and also believe that government creates bureaucracies and inefficiencies in most things it touches. However, the private sector has been running things for years and that is why we are now in this mess. If the private sector could deliver on its promise in healthcare we wouldn’t even be having a debate.

The costs of healthcare are simply too high, the system is broken and we need a new solution. Here's what private companies and a private healthcare system have produced for us over the last 8 years:

• Average family incomes are lower now than they were 8 years ago.
• What employers paid for workers increased by 25%, all due to healthcare costs. These costs are expected to rise by another 10% in the next year alone.
• The average cost of a health insurance policy for family of 4 from 2000 – 2007 more than doubled – from $6,000 to $13,000.
• 62% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. are caused by healthcare costs.
• We spend 50% more on healthcare than any other country and yet:
• • The U.S. is 45th in the world when it comes to infant mortality – behind Cuba.
  • When it comes to life expectancy the U.S. is 50th – behind Bosnia and South Korea. 
  • The U.S. is the only industrialized country without healthcare for its citizens.
  • 47 million Americans are without health insurance, 8.7 million are children.

I appreciate the debate Gregg. And, while although I agree that most things in this country should be run by private enterprise, healthcare is not one of them.

Related Posts:

How Healthcare Reform Will Affect the Healthcare Staffing Industry
 

Many Hospitals Are Still Behind When It Comes To Social Media

Over the past two years I've attended several hospital, human resource/recruiter trade shows and conferences where social media was a hot topic. Unfortunately, each session on the topic has been a disappointment. In some cases it was because the presenter was not up to speed on their information in this space. I've listened to speakers who were giving out very inaccurate information and admitted they didn't use social media themselves. However, the biggest disappointment typically comes from the questions and responses of the crowd participants as a whole.

 

Many hospital employees present at each of the shows admitted that their organization had no social media presence and typically gave the same reasons why – either their hospital had a policy prohibiting employees from using social media or the hospital was absent a policy permitting such usage.

 

Hospitals are fairly traditional institutions when it comes to marketing, technology and communication. Add to it the brave new world of social media and the issue becomes even more complicated. Here are some of the standard objections I hear as to why hospitals tend to avoid social media:

 

What if someone talks about our organization in a way we can’t control? Guess what – they are talking about your organization and you can’t control it. However, you can monitor it, be aware of it and participate in the conversation in an effort to help guide and keep it positive. If you do have an employee that says something negative or that violates one of your policies you can of course address this just as you would in any venue outside of social media. But first you have to know how to actively monitor your hospital's brand online and get your employees to promote this brand in a positive manner. The same rules for your employees apply to the web as they do within your own hospital walls. Establishing and fostering a positive means of communication is the way to go. Attempting to prohibit them from talking about your organization online or fully controlling the situation is a game you won’t win.

There is too much liability with social media. Every industry has the potential for lawsuits. Healthcare is not unique in this way. Imagine if every industry were similarly afraid of such liability that it led to the same avoidance and  inaction – we’d be getting no where. Your legal department needs to be educated on the realities of social media just like all of your departments. Your hospital legal department will gladly write you books on all the potential issues and liabilities that exist for you on the web. They’re lawyers and that’s what they do. I’m certainly not trying to dismiss their advice (or provide my own – I’m not a lawyer). However, the incredible adoption of social media as a means of communication and networking mean that ignoring it or prohibiting its use won’t make it go away. The risks and potential threats need to be discussed, recognized and thought through.

 

What about ads from competition? This is a question that bothered a lot of people at one conference. Many social networking sites contain ads. These hospital HR managers were concerned that if their employees went to their organization's social media pages they would be lured away by the ads from their competitors. The fact is that your employees are seeing these ads all over the place already and if an ad is going to make them jump you're at risk for losing them anyway. But being absent from the web is only going to ensure they see the ads of your competition and not any of your organizations promotions.

Our IT Department has firewalls permitting us from accessing social media sites. Being in healthcare your hospitals are held to incredibly strict standards in order to protect health information. Of course it’s necessary that IT has these firewalls in place. However, just like your other departments, IT too needs to be prepared and brought into the loop regarding your organization’s social media plan. If the bigger concern here is employee productivity (or loss of, due to usage of these sites) you can address this in your policies just like anything else, or simply allow access only to select individuals within your walls.

 

We don’t have a policy allowing us to use social media. I’ll be honest, hospitals are the only institutions I’ve interacted with where both the presence of a ‘No’ and the absence of a ‘Yes’ mean the same thing. This can create an environment of inaction. If you don’t have a policy I certainly don’t want to suggest you put yourself in a situation where you will get in trouble or fired, but I will suggest you start pushing for getting a policy in place STAT! If you don’t know where to start, there are many examples of social media policies out there to draw from.

 

Conclusion:

Promoting and marketing your brand using social media is not a fad and it’s not going away. In fact, if you are not already doing it you’re late for the party. Hospitals and health systems have a tremendous opportunity to get their departments and employees motivated and engaged with tools that help promote their organizations in many new, exciting and effective ways. Social media can help people learn about your hospital culture, help you communicate more effectively with patients and staff and even afford you new recruitment opportunities for healthcare professionals and staff.

Everyone you come into contact with is using social media – your staff, your patients, and yes, even your competition. If they use these tools more effectively than you, you will soon be losing patients, business and employees (if you're not already). Join the conversation and help direct it positively. If there are any negative issues, address them, resolve them and move on.

 

Kudos to those hospitals already engaged with social media. To the rest of you – it’s time to embrace these new platforms for what they are – the most effective communication and networking mediums that exist today.   

 

 

 

Healthcare Staffing: Canadian Style

I spent the last couple of days in Canada and learned some interesting things.

1. Lots of people really do say "eh" and "a boat" (about)
2. It's really a lot colder that far North
3. Vancouver is a beautiful city and has tons of great restaurants
4. Green traffic lights blink for some reason
5. The walk sign (little white light man) is different than the one in the states

I also met with a Canadian based company that makes staffing software for hospitals and they gave me some interesting information on healthcare staffing in Canada such as:

• All hospital census is always at 100%. There are 0 vacancies. The theories as to why were everything from - there is a waiting list for care in Canada and no beds are ever empty to - there are too many, unnecessary for-profit healthcare delivery organizations in the states causing a consistent census gap, mismanagement and poor staffing.
• All hospitals employees are unionized and the same organizations that run the educational centers for healthcare professionals negotiate on behalf of the unions.
• All of the hospitals are not for profit and effectively owned by the government.
• Due to all of this, there is little to no market for healthcare staffing agencies in Canada even though there is still a shortage of healthcare professionals.
• When polled, consistently, the people of Canada approve of their healthcare system by 80+%
• The company I met with also makes payroll systems for countries all over the world and claimed that 1) the U.S. has the most complicated tax laws over any other country and that 2) no other country they work with has local or regional taxes.

This information is anecdotal, as it came from a handful of people. However, I'm interested in learning more about it so I'll be doing more research on it. If anyone else has information on any of this please let me know.