Remote work is one of the ways health systems have combated the "Great Resignation" and retained talent.
Bart Fiser, vice president of revenue cycle and managed care at Cape Fear Valley Health system in Fayetteville, N.C., stopped by the "Becker’s Healthcare Podcast" to talk about remote work.
Editor's note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full episode here.
Question: What is your key focus for the second half of 2022?
Bart Fiser: My key focus right now is staff stabilization. Through the pandemic, our follow-up teams and our front-line staff were greatly impacted due to several different forces, but the biggest force has been the advancement of remote work. We had not been set up as a remote location. We had not had workers working remotely. It was an idea we entertained, but just could just never cross that bridge. The pandemic happened and we were forced to send some people home for what we considered their health protection, and then this became more of a retention strategy as other systems began recruiting folks to work for them remotely. We have been implementing multiple strategies around the remote base and continue to do so. I have about 30 to 40 percent, roughly, of the staff now working remotely full time, permanently. Our goal is to continue to push that to where we're somewhere around 80, 85 percent. This will allow us to recruit from other areas, recruit nationally and become a national competitor for staffing. That's one of the major focuses that I'll be working on over the next several months as developing internal policy, the infrastructure that goes with that.