Hospitals and health systems have become increasingly reliant on outside labor for delivering clinical care. Staffing agencies and managed service providers, however, rarely offer healthcare leaders the transparency needed to make smart staffing decisions.
Becker’s Healthcare spoke with Steve Swan, president of StaffBot, about how healthcare organizations can manage their own contingent clinical care services and automate traditionally labor-intensive and manual processes.
Without access to real-time data, organizations have no visibility into contingent labor decisions
When healthcare leaders rely on managed service providers, vendor management systems, and outside staffing agencies for contingent labor, they never truly know whether they are accurately paying for clinical services that are compatible with their organizations’ missions and with their patients’ needs. While patients’ needs are paramount to healthcare organizations, finding the equilibrium for pricing to ensure delivery of quality care for the future is important, too.
care for the future is important, too. “Vendor management systems are often either totally hands off or managed service providers tell healthcare leaders what they need based on outdated information or data from a different market. They don’t consider the unique characteristics of the organizational unit, patient population, demographics or location,” Mr. Swan said.
In contrast, StaffBot offers total transparency and empowerment to healthcare leaders so they can make the right contingent labor decisions based on real-time pricing data. “Our team is committed to ensuring that organizations get the right clinicians for their needs. We provide access to information which shows what yesterday, today and tomorrow look like, rather than relying on quarterly reports containing outdated information,” Mr. Swan said.
Real-time market rate analytics are critically important for managing contingent labor costs. Unfortunately, many managed service providers wait until quarterly review meetings to tell healthcare organizations that labor rates over the past three months were different than originally anticipated.
“Often the solution given to healthcare executives is to pay more and to pay more now,” Mr. Swan said. “We have a serious issue with that approach. StaffBot shows the median and mean wage rates for the last 120 days for each specialty area and unit, as well as by city, state, compact states and nationally. Healthcare leaders also have insight into what the next 120 days will look like based on publicly available, published rates collected in real time.”
StaffBot streamlines contingent labor onboarding processes and tracks licenses and certifications
If a healthcare organization’s contingent labor vendor isn’t streamlining the onboarding process or tracking licenses and certifications, it may be time to look for a better alternative. When staffing requisitions are entered into StaffBot’s workflow, the system matches clinicians to the healthcare organization’s preferences and requirements and ranks the candidates.
“With a platform like StaffBot, a hospital or health system can make a hiring decision in minutes,” Mr. Swan said.
Given the unpredictable nature of patient care, scheduling interviews for contingent labor at a specific time can be difficult. To address this challenge, StaffBot supports online recorded interviews. This enables decision-makers to review and rate candidates when it’s convenient for them. Within StaffBot, healthcare leaders can either schedule a time for a follow-up conversation or make a hiring decision immediately.
StaffBot’s vendor management system also collects certification and license information for clinicians and manages renewals. StaffBot is fully integrated with both Nursys and the American Heart Association systems. Since license and certification information is updated in real time and tied to StaffBot’s assignment records, healthcare organizations have peace of mind when unannounced inspections from The Joint Commission or other accreditation agencies arise.
“Not only does StaffBot keep clinicians licensed for their current assignment, but it also monitors licensure for every state in which the clinician has ever worked. If there is any action on a license from another state, leaders from the clinician’s current assignment will be notified immediately,” Mr. Swan explained.
StaffBot is the first platform that offers transparency into contingent labor management and accelerates contingent labor processes. “We generate staffing recommendations that healthcare leaders trust,” Mr. Swan said.