Staffing Robot - Healthcare Staffing, Marketing and Technology Blog

Make Your Nomination for the Staffing Industry Innovator Award

The Staffing Industry Analysts is asking for nominations for the "Staffing Innovator of the Year" award. The award will go to honor a person or company that has contributed a significant innovation toward the positive development of the staffing industry ecosystem.

No doubt you're having a hard time deciding between a certain healthcare staffing blogger or a particular healthcare VMS company that has completely changed how hospitals manage their staffing agencies across the U.S. However, don't forget about the other companies out there also doing there part to innovate this industry:

• Med Staff On-Call - In the very near future Med Staff On-Call's approach to staffing could become the medical staffing industry standard. Their entire recruitment and on-boarding process is done on-line with technology. They also communicate job orders and receive confirmations from their staff in the same way. This process allows them to save their clients money, pay their staff more and keep their overhead low. A truly winning business model.

• Clearview - Clearview makes the best product on the market for managing your business as a staffing agency. There is no second. They also have a suite of other products for nurse competency testing, recruiting, application tracking, online clinical skill checklists and electronic signature documents. They continue to put out new products and grow their already impressive market share.

• TempWorks - TempWorks makes great software for staffing agencies. It's not specific to healthcare so I can't say that I've used it or even seen that much of it. However, following their updates and blog - Staffing Talk - makes it clear that these guys are big innovators in the  staffing industry.

• Amistaff - Amistaff is the parent company of Nurse Testing, eSig Tech and Blue Sky Medical Staffing Software. More healthcare staffing companies use Nurse Testing than any other similar product on the market. Currently, Amistaff is planning on launching a new product called Prophecy in early 2010. This product will incorporate clinical, behavioral and situational assessments with their Nurse Testing product. If it lives up to the hype it could prove to be a game changer for hospitals recruit, screen and hire healthcare staff.

• ShiftHound - The former founders of Bidshift (now Concerro) have started a new company called ShiftHound. ShiftHound delivers a very light weight, yet robust core scheduling tool for hospitals to manage their day to day staffing. ShiftHound is the first of many companies to follow that will challenge incumbent staffing software companies in this space with a more focused, simple and light weight solution. It will be worth watching how they navigate the challenges of the industry. Also, I'm dying to know if these guys left because the new owners of Concerro got their name wrong.

• Medical Solutions - They may appear to be your average size agency doing business as usual. However, their use of social media and having the #1 page rank spot for healthcare staffing blog definitely makes them stand out from the crowd. The information they provide to the industry is valuable and makes them good contenders for industry innovators.

Help promote the industry by participating in this award nomination. Also, be sure and leave a comment if you think there are other companies out there deserving of a nomination.

Alright - get on it. Make your nomination for the staffing industry innovator award. And remember - it's Staffing Robot - with a space between the words. ;-)

Follow the Healthcare Staffing Twitter List

Twitter has released a new featured called "Twitter Lists."  The feature allows you to organize those you follow (and that follow you) and streamline their feeds. Others can then follow these lists, saving them the time of hunting for individuals on Twitter with shared interests.

The feature also shows users how many lists they have been added to, suggesting that the user’s tweets fall into a certain category or adds value to a particular list.

So, naturally, I created the Healthcare Staffing List. Please follow the list to see tweets from these people and companies from one source.

This list features:

• Healthcare Staffing Agencies
• Recruiters and employees of staffing agencies
• Healhtcare VMS and other tech companies that provide software to the healthcare staffing industry
• Healthcare staffing industry analysts, bloggers and other relevant news companies

Why should you follow the list?

• To get all relevant healthcare staffing industry tweets from one location
• To learn about new healthcare staffing products and services as they become available
• Find out the latest industry news and 'buzz'
• Monitor and keep track of your competition
• Monitor and keep track of your own brand

Why should you be in this list?

• Increase your relevance by being included in as many lists as you can
• Promote your company to potential customers
• Gain access to followers that can find you more easily

I will continue to add to this list. I hope you find it useful. If you are not in the list but would like to be, please email or tweet me and I'll add you. If you create your own list be sure to list it on Listorious.

The Fun Theory

I came across a site called The Fun Theory. It's an initiative of Volkswagen, dedicated to the thought that making things simple and fun is the best way to change people’s behavior for the better. No matter what it is - yourself, your company, the environment, etc., the only thing that matters is change for the better. Essentially, it's a contest to have people create things that accomplish the goal of the initiative. 

It's an interesting concept. How often in your workday or when you're creating something are you thinking about keeping things simple and fun? When you're creating a form, designing a web page, making a new feature, presenting to a new client - are you just going through the standard motions? Or are you thinking about how to get people more engaged - how to grab their attention - to connect with them - to have fun? What  would be different if you did?

Something to think about.

This is my favorite one:

Med Staff On-Call's Innovative Approach to Healthcare Staffing

Company: Med Staff On-Call

CEO: Denise A. Kent PhD(c), RN, APN - CEO

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Positioning is one of the hardest challenges facing healthcare staffing agencies. Comparatively, each agency goes through the same/similar processes for recruiting and placing healthcare professionals at hospitals. This makes it difficult for staffing companies to separate themselves from their competition, typically leaving them with only price or volume as their true differentiators.

Recently, however, I discovered a healthcare staffing agency that has a completely different spin on what it means to be a staffing company. Med Staff On-Call is a fully automated staffing agency that uses technology to change the way their business is run. From recruiting, to hiring, to receiving and filling job orders, Med Staff On-Call has found a way to stand out from the pack. The efficiencies created in their innovative model allow them to contain costs, present competitive rates to their clients and provide an overall better work experience for the healthcare professionals they employ.

Med Staff On-Call has three key aspects of their company that make them unique:

Quality - The Intellimatch™ technology process they’ve created drives the quality of the staff they provide by ensuring that the medical professionals they place are the most qualified for every position. This automated matching process improves satisfaction for their employees by factoring in availability, shift and facility preferences, and credentials when notifying staff of available shifts.

Efficiency – Med Staff On-Call’s web-based staffing solution is much more efficient than a traditional staffing agency. The process is completely automated eliminating phone calls, faxes and other manual tasks associated with a traditional staffing process. Instead, staff post their availability on Med Staff On-Call’s secure website and receive notifications of qualifying positions via text message or e-mail. Healthcare organizations are notified instantly of filled positions. In addition, Med Staff On-Call has interfaced their system with leading healthcare vendor management companies so that job orders are made instantly available in their system.

 

Competitive Rates – Med Staff On-Call is 100% driven by innovation, leveraging technology to streamline the staffing process for their hospitals and medical staff. Their technology allows them to lower their internal costs and pass that savings on to their hospital partners. Efficiencies derived from their technology platform allow them to focus on recruiting and retaining quality medical professionals.

Q&A with Med Staff On-Call’s CEO - Denise A. Kent PhD(c), RN, APN

How do healthcare professionals sign up for your service?

“Healthcare professionals sign up for our service on-line. They complete all of the necessary pre-employment requirements and submit their credentials electronically. We then have their credentials verified by a third party. Once the information for the healthcare professional is validated and approved they can access our job orders, add their availability and sign up for specific job alerts.”

How are candidates submitted for jobs?

“Most of our job requisitions come in through on-line portals such as healthcare vendor management systems. These jobs are sent directly to our software application through the interfaces we have built to these VMS systems. If a job matches the preferences and credential qualifications of a healthcare professional they are alerted via text message or email and can respond through the same mediums for the jobs they want. The confirmations are then sent directly to the hospital.”

Why did you decide to run your business this way?

“We never had any intention of being a traditional staffing agency that’s old school. We knew we could create a competitive advantage by delivering higher quality staff, faster and at a lower cost by leveraging technology. Additionally, we wanted to provide healthcare professionals with a better work experience by giving them direct access and more control over their schedules and job preferences. Technology was the logical direction to go in.”

Do you feel that vendor management companies help or hurt your business?

“They definitely help our business. The vendor neutral vendor management companies completely handle the burden of credentialing, billing and job acquisition with our clients. Their systems improve quality by requiring proper documentation and including features like on-line performance evaluations. Overall the efficiency is completely complementary to our model.”

Do hospitals ever have an issue with your model being 100% driven by technology?

“Our clients love how quickly we can meet their staffing requests. We also have a very thorough screening process for our staff. All of their credentials are verified by a third party and all this information is accessible via our system.”

Do you work with other modalities outside of nursing?

“Currently, our primary focus is staffing nurses and nursing assistants. However, we have begun placing allied staff including pharmacy, PT and OT professionals.”

Do you feel your model has helped you in this economy?

“No question it has helped us. Because of our technology we are able to keep our costs low and offer staff at a very competitive rate to our clients. This has made us the number one provider to some of the largest health systems in the country.”

Conclusion: Med Staff On-Call is offering some of the most innovative solutions in the market to both their hospital clients and the heatlhcare professionals they employ. Such innovations will continue to have a positive impact in changing the way business is done in the healthcare staffing industry.

Healthcare Vendor Management Search Enginge

Today I’m launching another Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) for the healthcare staffing industry titled “Healthcare Vendor Management Search.” I have complied a list of several companies in the U.S. (as well as a few other relevant sites) that deliver healthcare vendor management services and included them in this engine. This list includes companies that deliver VM in the form of VMS Technology as well as on-site Managed Services. I will continue to add sites to the search engine as I become aware of them.

Last week I created the Healthcare Staffing Search engine and discussed how these search engines work in more detail.

These search engines will all be located on one page on my site: Healthcare Staffing Search Engines. You can also access them in the top navigation above on this page. Please bookmark the page if you find these tools helpful. I have also embedded the Healthcare Vendor Management search engine here for you to try out:

Healthcare Vendor Management Search:

Custom Search

If you provide Vendor Management Services to the healthcare staffing industry and think your website is not in the list (or you just want to verify) please feel free to email me and I’ll add it.

Related Posts:

The Healthcare Staffing Search Engine

The Healthcare Staffing Search Enginge

Today I’m launching a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) for the healthcare staffing industry titled “Healthcare Staffing Search.” I have complied a list of over 1000 healthcare staffing companies in the U.S. (as well as a few other relevant sites) and included them in this engine. I will continue to add sites to the search engine as I become aware of them.

If you’re unfamiliar with Google CSE, it’s a service that allows you to build your own customized search engine of specific websites relevant to a particular topic. Setting a search engine up is easy and takes only a few minutes. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed with too many or irrelevant search results when searching on topics in the healthcare staffing industry, this search engine will remedy that. If you use the Healthcare Staffing Search engine I’ve created your results will come only from the web sites relevant to the staffing industry.

For example, if you perform a regular Google search for “Nurse Pay Rates” you will return thousands of results, many of which are irrelevant. However, with the Healthcare Staffing Search engine your return results will display information on Nurse Pay Rates from industry websites only.

Going forward, this search engine will be located on it’s own page on my site: Healthcare Staffing Search. You can also access it in the top navigation above on this page. Please bookmark it if you find the tool helpful. I have also embedded the search engine here for you to try out.

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I hope this tool is helpful. I will be releasing a couple other custom search engines next week so stay tuned.

If you think your website is not in the list or you just want to verify, please feel free to email me and I’ll add it.

I created this search engine after being inspired by Ed Bennett’s Custom Search Engine for hospitals in the U.S. Check it out.

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.

Staffing Robot

“When I grow up I want to work in the healthcare staffing industry!” 

Ok, these words never came from my mouth as a child.  Yet, here I find myself an active participant in the industry for over 8 years.  As a child, however, I was always fascinated by technology.  I’m not simply talking about computers or hand held devices, I’m talking about big concepts.  Back-mounted units of propulsion and self-constructed beams of laser light used to defend the galaxy come to mind.

A few years back when I worked for a national healthcare staffing company I started to notice an alarming trend.  We started to sound just like our competitors, and they like us.  It was the same pitch over and over - We all had the best nurses.  We all had the best “high-touch” customer service.  And, of course, we all wanted our bill rates to increase annually.  The truth is there was nothing unique about the service any of our companies offered.  Especially from the client’s perspective.  We were all just jacketless books on the shelf, indistinguishable from the next.  After a while, I started to feel like a robot.  Not in a good way either.  I felt pre-programmed, incapable of changing my function.  I was in fact, a staffing robot. 

Now, several years later, I talk to staffing suppliers from all across the country every day.  What have I noticed?  Not much has changed.  I get suppliers telling me about how their services are different from their competitors and their nurses are the best.  But for the most part, they’re just doing the same thing every supplier in the industry is doing. 

To be fair, there are several companies in the industry offering new and innovative solutions and it’s my goal to bring more attention to those companies.  But ask yourself, what role are you playing?  Are you a staffing robot?  Are you sure? 

It’s time we figured out how to truly bring value to our clients.  In fact, should we not focus some of our efforts to help solve the nursing shortage as a whole?  The healthcare staffing industry is in need of change.  Now is the time for new and innovative solutions to make their way to the forefront.  We need to think differently and better embrace innovation and technology.

After all, it’s 2009 and no matter who you are technology is a big part of all our lives - both personally and professionally.  Healthcare has been notoriously behind when it comes to adopting technology and the healthcare staffing industry is no exception.  With all the focus on technology playing a bigger role in healthcare it’s imperative that we all play our part at ensuring the same focus occurs in our area.

The companies creating and providing innovative solutions to the market can’t solely carry the burden of this challenge.  It is up to every participant in the industry to embrace these ideas and changes and help impact the way business is done for the better.  If successful, such changes could dramatically improve:

• Patient care quality
• Fairness of competition
• Ensured compliance and standards
• Accurate and market driven bill and pay rates
• Client satisfaction
• Greater access and ability to recruit and retain staff
• Quicker and more reliable communication
• The impact (if not eliminate) felt by the shortage of healthcare professionals

Some of these might be lofty goals but the challenge we face in this country at improving our healthcare system is great.  I’m certainly not an expert in the field of healthcare staffing or in technology.  But I am present, active and interested in both.  My goal with this blog is to engage others with similar interests, identify those playing a part in these efforts and win some converts through an ongoing conversation to help further and support technological innovations in the healthcare staffing industry.

Full Disclosure:
I am the founder and current Vice President of Product Marketing of a software company called ShiftWise.  ShiftWise is a Vendor Management Services provider to the healthcare staffing industry.  That said, this blog will not be a sales board for ShiftWise, nor is it endorsed or supported by ShiftWise in anyway.  The views and opinions expressed in this blog are my personal views and opinions only.