We have a dear friend, Lore Anderson, that was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease earlier this year. We are going to help her beat it
by raising money for The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s
Research and the Brian Grant
Foundation.
There is an event in Portland, OR, Shake it Till We Make It! that
is being hosted by former Portland Trailblazer, Brian Grant who also
has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. His celebrity guests include
Michael J Fox, Mohammed Ali, Pat Riley and many others.
Our goal
is to raise at least $5,000 for this great cause benefiting Parkinson’s
research. We also want to surprise Lore with a seat at the event. Even
if we only raise $1,000 we can make this happen for her.
We are
looking for contributions large and small. Every $5, $10, $25, $50, or
$100 helps the cause and will be greatly appreciated by all those
affected by this disease. If you or your company donates $1,000, you
may attend the event live with Lore.
I'm incredibly proud of what ShiftWise has become and look forward to watching it grow even more successful over the next several years. However, I will be watching the success from a distance, as I have decided it's time to move on to a new venture.
Today I wanted to officially announce the launch of a new company appropriately called - Staffing Robot! The company currently has 5 employees and is being founded by me and my business partner, Ross Barbieri, who also helped me start ShiftWise.
The Staffing Robot blog will become an extension of our new company's services and the blog posts will continue to provide you with relevant information from the healthcare staffing industry.
It's been great working with so many of you over the last several years and I look forward to working with some of you in this new capacity. If your hospital or staffing agency is looking to rebrand, create a new website, build a web application or improve your web marketing through SEO or social media campaigns - Staffing Robot is open for business.
Discussing the politics between unions, hospitals and striking nurses is always a touchy subject. Lately, however, this subject continues to come up as nurse unions threaten strikes all around the country.
The hospitals feel such a stance from the unions is too strong and detrimental to their ability to deliver quality patient care. Many nurses actually worry about the patient care issue as well. For most, it is the primary reason why they don't strike more often. A major difference between nurses going on strike and workers in other industries is that the lives and care of patients is involved. Even a temporary lapse of care can put lives in danger. When nurses are ready to strike because of an imbalance in staff-to-patient ratios, justifying a walkout that exacerbates this situation is difficult.
Therefore, being prepared for a strike is the best situation for both hospitals and their healthcare staff. The best way for hospitals to be prepared for a strike is to have strong contracts with reputable staffing agencies that can have staff ready to go in a strike situation. Having such contracts can ensure the best bill rates for strike situations and more importantly, that your facility will have trained, oriented staff ready to go.
Establishing such relationships doesn't just benefit the hospitals by helping them keep their doors open, it also provides nurses and the public with the comfort they need in knowing that patients are still being taken care of. For example, A Superior Court Judge in California was successful at preventing the recent nursing strike by issuing a restraining order just prior to the strike. The grounds of the order suggested that the strike would cause a danger to the public. However, if hospitals are prepared at all times with trained agency staff there is no reason a lapse in care should occur.
It's true that employing temporary staff in a strike situation is more costly in terms of pay rates and orientation costs. Further, many staffing agencies charge higher rates for the last minute, critical needs. However, the more prepared a hospital is for such a situation, the more affordable temporary staff become and the better trained they are to start providing good patient care on day one.
A suggestion for hospitals would be to have some sort of 'Strike Insurance' agreement with one or more of your staffing agencies. This 'insurance' would perhaps be something you pay for monthly, quarterly or annually and would allow you to identify key temporary staff that you have screened and oriented to your facility. It would also help you negotiate better rates so that paying for such a service would go towards the bill rates during a strike, keeping the rates reasonable and your budget more manageable.
I'm not sure if there are any staffing agencies out there that offer such a service but I think it's one worth considering. There is a great opportunity for all sides to make a bad situation more manageable. Healthcare staffing agencies can help both hospitals and nurses during a strike if more creative solutions are sought. I'd love to hear from any hospitals or staffing agencies that have been part of a strike situation to learn what their process and overall outcome was.
Today I'm launching The Healthcare Staffing
Report. The Healthcare Staffing Report is a site of
aggregated news links, curated from hundreds of industry sources. From
my perspective, finding relevant news for the healthcare staffing
industry is difficult because the sources are fragmented and in most
cases delivered through outdated, subscription models.
The purpose of this site is to deliver useful news content to
participants in the healthcare staffing industry – free of charge. If
you’re a staffing agency, hospital, healthcare professional, industry
association, or a technology/service provider within the healthcare
staffing industry, you now have a single source of relevant news links
that will benefit you in your career.
The best part? The links on this site aren’t just static feeds from
around the web. These links are curated top stories from hundreds of
sources such as blogs, associations, news outlets, etc.
Currently, the news links on the site are updated daily and fall into the categories of:
Today's Headline
Top Industry News
Staffing Agencies
Hospitals & Health Systems
Healthcare Professionals
Government & Economy
Sales & Marketing
Social Media
Vendor Management
Technology
Healthcare IT
Just for Fun
The Healthcare Staffing Report also provides several opportunities for you to
promote your company in the form of ads and sponsored links that are
‘followed’ to increase your SEO. (The news story links are not
followed.)
The sites promotion opportunities include:
Top Page Leaderboard Ads
Mid-Page Square Ads
Sponsored Links to promote your website, press release or other relevant news
Upcoming Events to promote your webinar, trade show, user group, etc.
This article from the Wall Street Journal talks about the increasing shortage of physicians in the U.S. and how it looks as though it will only get worse. To make matters worse, many people believe that the new healthcare reform act will cause more people to consume healthcare resources, thereby increasing the need for healthcare professionals even more.
"It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of
doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief
advocacy officer.
Obviously an increased need for healthcare professionals will benefit the healthcare staffing industry. However, many measures need to be taken to ensure the shortage doesn't grow to severe. Even though healthcare reform will positively affect the healthcare staffing industry, too severe of a shortage will hurt us all as a country. Unfortunately, the healthcare reform bill did not go far enough in addressing the growing need for healthcare professionals.
Proponents of the new health-care law say it does attempt to address the
physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people
to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for
primary-care doctors.
This map is a great visualization of the shortage of physicians across the country.
Of course, how this legislation is carried out will determine the exact changes we all see and feel. There are several sources around the web that have posted summaries on some of the most immediate changes the healthcare reform legislation will make.
To me, the biggest question here is about the cost and potential tax increases we will all face as individuals and businesses. According to this interactive tool from the Washington Post, neither my premiums nor my personal taxes will increase due to healthcare reform. The really good news is that my premiums were expected to rise between 10-15% before "Obamacare," so I'm going to see this as being positive.
For businesses, it now appears that not providing health insurance to your employees will earn you a penalty. It will be interesting to see if this legislation changes the classifications or definitions of employees as to when insurance has to be provided. However, most large companies already provide insurance for all of their internal employees and offer it as a benefit to their field staff who meet qualifying hours. Therefore, there should be no impact to most healthcare staffing agencies in this regard. For new and small healthcare staffing companies (under 50 employees) there is even better news. Not only will these companies avoid potential penalties for lack of employee insurance provisions, they can qualify for stipends to provide insurance to their employees. This will offer tremendous assistance to start-up companies who otherwise couldn't offer coverage.
Unfortunately, big businesses will most likely see a tax increase to help pay for all the new legislation. Although I'm not a fan of paying more in taxes, I'm also not 'anti-tax' across the board. Paying taxes for certain things that benefit society, such as healthcare, is a good thing. I'm one of those crazies that believes in the greater good so I'm willing to pay a little more for it.
Many people disagree with this view completely and feel that healthcare reform is nothing short of socialism and the end of the American Empire. During a recent webinar hosted by the Staffing Industry Analysts, many CEO's of large staffing companies were discussing how detrimental this legislation will be to their business and all the other horrible things healthcare reform will bring. I've even had people on my blog leave comments and send me emails suggesting the same. For example, Randy Mensinger from Custom Healthcare left a comment on one of my healthcare reform blog posts stating he feels this will put the company he works for (and many others) out of business. He was so upset with my opinion that he even followed up on my comment with an email full of obscenities and calling me all kinds of things I won't repeat here.
So obviously not everyone shares my opinion. I'm willing to admit I could be wrong. If I am and businesses have to start carrying such a heavy tax burden that it puts them out of business I'll be right back here advocating against healthcare reform. I completely respect an opposing view and honest debate on healthcare reform. However, there are several things I don't understand, such as:
Being disrespectful and unprofessional to each other. It doesn't matter who you are, but, if you work for or represent a staffing company in our small industry I don't think it benefits you in any way to be unprofessional and disrespectful.
Where was the vociferous anti-tax movement during the bush years when we were spending trillions of dollars on an unjust war that was started for made up reasons? Perhaps if we hadn't spent so much money then (and now) we'd have money for things like healthcare for our citizens.
Many people are up in arms about the mandate that every American will be required to have health insurance. However, the health insurance mandates are actually a Republican idea. These mandates are only going to benefit the health insurance industry and those politicians beholden to this industry. So clearly their outcry is merely political posturing.
No matter how you feel, what we all really need is information, facts and a real debate. Much of the information coming from the media is full of sensational, unfounded claims. It's not only irresponsible, it's dangerous. Unfortunately, without reinstating the Fairness Doctrine it's only going to get worse. For example, this video:
I'm all for free speech but when this much hateful, misinformed rhetoric is pumped through the media for several hours a day, every day, it's no wonder people are resorting to violence against members of congress over something like healthcare reform. There are many reasons justifying the call for revolution. However, I assure you, healthcare reform is not one of them.
In summary, I truly believe that healthcare reform will benefit us as individuals and as a country. It will be a huge win for the healthcare staffing industry. That said, I'm not a fan of the government and will watch the outcomes of this legislation closely and with a critical eye. I am also willing to admit when I'm wrong. Therefore, if the sky starts falling or we witness the collapse and devastation of the medical staffing industry, you'll see me at the next tea party rally.
I hope the opposite is also true. If you're an opponent of this legislation and none of these horrible things come to pass it would be great to hear you admit you were wrong someday.
Over the last few weeks I've been to several online marketing conferences that specifically focused on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) strategies. Bing was a big sponsor of all of these conferences so I got to hear several Bing employees talk about the benefits of their new search engine and I also got to try it out myself.
Bing's marketing campaign is promoting that they are not a search engine, but rather, a 'decision engine.' Bing is focused on better understanding user intent and displaying fewer, but more relevant/accurate results based on your intent. Since their inception, search engines have always been on a mission to
better understand user intent and deliver better results so in a sense, this is not new. In addition, with Google's recent introduction of personal
search results they too
seem to be headed further down this path.
In theory, this all sounds great to me. However, I personally don't like where this could lead. Bing seems to be narrowing the results returned based on the assumption that they better understand your intent. They make it more of an effort to get passed these limited options and expand your search in case they got it wrong.
Others are getting into the game as well. Take a look at this screen shot from Travelocity. In performing a search for a plane ticket I was presented with one option they selected for me based on what they felt was my 'intent.' Not only were they wrong but it is somewhat frustrating and confusing to expand the search results and chose the best flight for my trip.
What was most interesting to me during this process though was how I felt about it. Even if the trip Travelocity presented to me was the cheapest, fastest, best flight available I had one simple problem with the selection presented to me. My problem was that I didn't have choice. Call me old fashion but I'm not yet ready for the machines to start making all of my decisions.
Although the convenience and efficiency of a decision engine is somewhat appealing for many reasons, personally, I want to have the ability to choose for the following reasons:
I don't follow the crowd. If the decision engine is presenting options to me based on aggregated user data I can guarantee that 80% of the time it's going to be wrong. I find I tend to not follow the crowd all that often and I don't want to start.
Brand trust. I need to have significant trust in a brand before I will allow it to make decisions for me. I assure you, I don't have that trust in Travelocity or Microsoft. In fact, I can't think of any brands I trust this much.
The end of discovery. If these decision engines make our choices for us pretty soon all the available tools will have the same problem Apple's app store has. All of the 'popular' items will bubble to the top and new, innovative, exciting options will never get discovered because they never get 'recommended'. Once something is deemed popular it's like trying to beat an incumbent politician. It's somewhat of a frightening prospect to think how limiting search results will stifle information and decision making. Imagine how it would be if every time a hospital searched for 'healthcare staffing agency' they were presented only with the selection of On Assignment. It's great if you're On Assignment, but not so great if you're - any other agency.
Choice. Even if the engines are using 'my preferences' to present me with optionsm I still want to have the final decision. In fact, I don't want the results to be skewed in any way toward my previous choices because who's to say my preferences won't change from one day to the next. I certainly don't think the robots know better than I.
Again, I'm all for more accurate and relevant search results being presented to me. However, I want the option to opt in to any decision making functionality each time I engage with the product. Further, I don't want the options presented limited for any reason. I still want to choose. I want a search engine, not a decision engine.
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