Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing, Marketing and Technology Blog

What if Booking A Plane Ticket Worked Like Our Healthcare System?

Whether you're for or against healthcare reform I think it's difficult to argue that our current system is working.

Think about the services you make use of every day from business to personal. Booking a hotel, finding a photo online, sharing information with your friends, or managing your internal work projects. Imagine if any of these services were as difficult to work with as our current healthcare system. Would you continue to use them?

Not being a big fan of the government, what shocks me is that, in this case, we're not talking about the government running something inefficiently. We're talking about private business. It's the private insurance companies that have failed to deliver a viable model or useful service when it comes to healthcare. How people can continue to support this broken system when they would have no tolerance for a similar level of service from the services they use everyday is beyond me.

This video is a parody of what it would be like to book a plane ticket with a travel agency that had a business model similar to our current healthcare system. Makes you think.

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

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
 

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.

AMN Poll: Reform may worsen healthcare worker shortage

In partnership with The Council on Physician and Nurses Supply, AMN Healthcare released the results of a recently conducted poll of hospital CEOs suggesting that healthcare reform will exacerbate the shortage of healthcare professionals.

"While the short-term economic environment may have temporarily eased the ability to recruit and retain clinical staff, the long-term dynamics of an aging population will drive the need for thousands of additional healthcare professionals," Susan Nowakowski, president of AMN Healthcare, said. "Any plan to expand access to care would intensify an already anticipated critical shortage of clinicians."

Healthcare reform has been a big topic this year. How healthcare reform will affect the healthcare staffing industry remains to be seen. However, most people seem to think it will definitely have a positive impact on the healthcare staffing industry as the demand for healthcare staff increases.

Why American Healthcare Costs So Much | WSJ Article

There is a really fantastic article in the Washington Post about why American's spend so much on healthcare. The article provides data from the International Federation of Health Plans, on the prices of healthcare items.

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. ...if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

My favorite quote in the article talks about a key missing component to the healthcare reform debate - price:

The health-care reform debate has done a good job avoiding the subject of prices. The argument over the Medicare-attached public plan was, in a way that most people didn't understand, an argument about prices, but it quickly became an argument about a public option without a pricing dimension, and never really looked back. A health-care debate in this country that isn't aware of the price differential is not an informed debate.

There are some great graphs in the article. Look at this one on the cost of hospitals stays in the U.S.

Here is a link to all the data graphs from the article on the IFHP Comparative Price Report (.pdf download).

National Healthcare Trends - Notes from the Healthcare Staffing Summit 2009 [Pt. 3]

Keynote with Senator Tom Daschle: National Healthcare Trends and Issues and Their Impact on the Healthcare Workforce

Being in D.C. last week, you couldn't help finding yourself in discussions about healthcare reform and its impact on the healthcare staffing industry. The highlight of the Healthcare Staffing Summit was listening to former Senator, Tom Daschle speak on the topic. Whether you agree with him politically or not, you can’t argue with his knowledge and command over the topic of healthcare, as well as his speaking ability. It was an amazing opportunity to hear him.

Here are some highlights of his speech from my notes:

• Reforming healthcare is a transformative event, equivalent to similar events that happened after WW2, the civil rights movement and 9/11.
• 50 million people are uninsured at part or all of the year and 48% of those insured are not adequately insured.
• The U.S. is the only industrialized country that has a problem with healthcare coverage for its citizens.
• Healthcare costs everyone in the U.S. about $8K per person. This is 40% higher than the next highest country – Switzerland.  22% of these costs go to administration.
• Starbucks spends more on healthcare than they do coffee. 
• Ford spends more on healthcare than they do steel.
• Medical costs are the #1 reason for personal bankruptcy (over 50%) in this country.
• The U.S. starts its spending on healthcare at the most expensive part of the cost pyramid (the top) and works its way down, running out of money before everyone can be covered. Other societies work in reverse, in order to cover more people adequately at a more cost effective rate.
• Senator Daschle calls the debate about healthcare reform “the noise of democracy” which he states is “far better than the noise of violence.”
• Healthcare reform will create a tremendous demand for healthcare professionals, thereby having a positive effect on the healthcare staffing industry.
• Today we have 21^st century operating rooms with 19^th century administration.
• Primary areas of the healthcare reform bill without consensus - public option; financing mechanism of $1 Trillion; to what extent cuts should be part of funding, mandates; role of the employers; medical malpractice; insurance companies selling across state lines; federal health board.

Related Posts

Notes from the Healthcare Staffing Summit 2009 [Pt. 2]

Notes from the Healthcare Staffing Summit 2009 [Pt. 1]

How Healthcare Reform Will Affect the Healthcare Staffing Industry

I learned a valuable lesson while getting my Political Science degree – don’t talk about politics with your family or at work. I do my best to keep politics separate from all things work related, however, the topic of healthcare reform is such an important and closely related issue I feel the need to weigh in. 

Let me first start by saying that, no matter who’s in the White House, I’m not a fan of the government or government run programs. However, I’m less of a fan of unchecked corporate control. I would love to believe in the theory that free market Capitalism will take care of everything. Unfortunately, I think our free markets surrendered to large corporations years ago and the result of this has produced our current economy and poor healthcare delivery system. Therefore, I think some government intervention is past due.

Personally, I’ve been without health insurance several times in my life and it’s a very scary feeling. Now, having children, the thought of being unemployed and being without insurance is overwhelming. 

The negative hype against healthcare reform is disturbing to say the least and only shows that most people don’t understand how healthcare is delivered in this country. I can only hope that these obvious scare tactics designed to keep the current healthcare system in place (one beholden to the insurance companies) don't take root in the minds of too many.

There are some very good reasons for hoping that our healthcare system is reformed.  Some of them even benefit the healthcare staffing industry such as:

Fewer patients will be turned away

Guaranteed coverage will mean that more people will receive the care they need. Doctors, hospitals, and other providers won’t have the dilemma of dealing with patients who need care but don’t have coverage. Organizations that spend endless amounts of time battling issues with private providers will benefit greatly.

 

More Jobs
The increase in the amount of insured people will subsequently increase the demand for care.  This will undoubtedly increase the need for and exacerbate the shortage of healthcare professionals. Most likely, this sudden increase in demand will create a difficult period of adjustment. However, we should trust that measures will be taken to meet the demand and that all the challenges we face in this area will be worth it in the end. The increased demand for healthcare will present a significant increase in opportunities for healthcare professionals, those looking to get into the field and those that assist healthcare professionals in finding jobs – both permanent and temporary.

Improved quality of care

A large focus of healthcare reform is on improving the quality of care provided. Time spent on preventative treatments and better management of chronic conditions will be reimbursed. Incentives will be given for getting things right the first time and not reimbursing poor care delivery at the same amount. In addition, consumers will now have at least (not be limited to) one payer that provides a choice of providers. Consumers will no longer have to deal with billing or claim hassles, making their overall healthcare experience a better one.

Promotion of Technology

The reform will also emphasize and promote the use of technology which will dramatically improve efficiencies and cut down on errors for healthcare delivery organizations. The greater adoption of technology will also mean better information for providers and consumers, and less paperwork. Business transactions within the industry will also become more streamlined. The reform will present vast opportunities to technology providers in the healthcare industry.

Aside from all of these positive benefits, here are my personal reasons for supporting healthcare reform:

• The U.S. is the only industrialized country without healthcare for its citizens. It's unclear to me why taking care of those in need is not a basic right of every country.
• 47 million Americans are without health insurance, 8.7 million are children.
• There is widespread support for healthcare reform from nurses and nursing associations across the country.
• It’s the right thing to do. Most people without coverage are unemployed and come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. Greater equity in access to care will help eliminate the disparities in health outcomes.
  
• Finally, I think most of us live with the delusion that we are covered for anything we want and that we have access to the best care on the planet. The truth is you have no idea what you're actually covered for because it's ultimately up to your insurance company to determine if they will cover you or not. Further, just because the care is there doesn't mean you can afford it. Even if you are covered, most likely your insurance will only pay a portion of the full amount. Do you know if you can afford the balance? Personally, I don't want myself or anyone I know to be on the wrong end of an insurance claim denial or unable to afford the treatment I need. Do you? 

Of course this issue is the newest political football where one side feels it’s a moral obligation of humanity and the other worries it’s part of the socialist takeover of our country. As a political scientist, let me assure you – our country is far from being socialist. Calmly allowing hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent on wars while almost starting riots at the notion of providing healthcare to our citizens actually suggest the opposite is true. If you're really so upset about government spending focus your complaints where they are most needed.

Do the right thing – support the reform of this country’s healthcare system.