Healthcare talent acquisition and management face persistent challenges in today's labor market. How organizations confront these barriers, however, can serve as a key differentiator and lever for improvements in costs and recruits.
Springfield, Ill.-based Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS), a multi-institutional healthcare system that cares for patients across 15 communities in Illinois and Wisconsin, partnered with AMN Healthcare and successfully implemented a new contingent labor strategy to stabilize rates and improve the quality of candidates.
HSHS' transition to a single, digital platform that provides analytics and actionable data for strategic decision-making in talent management has streamlined operations and significantly reduced costs.
Here are four underpinnings that form the foundation of HSHS' and AMN Healthcare's partnership:
- HSHS lacked visibility across its core, flexible and contingent workforce, which led to siloed decision-making. These factors prompted significant leadership changes. In 2022, the organization created two new leadership roles — system COO and chief medical officer — which now work with the broader leadership team to standardize and systematize processes across the health system, including key areas like clinician quality, nursing practice and supply chain management. In addition to greater alignment, HSHS expects this change will improve quality outcomes and patient care metrics.
- To streamline operations and update processes, HSHS sought a partnership focused on change management and developing a unified future state. HSHS selected AMN Healthcare to help achieve several goals. HSHS wanted a system-wide, consolidated approach to strategic workforce solutions; data and analytics on contingent and core staff; enterprise visibility across contingent labor; total talent support across numerous service lines for consolidated operations and billing; and dedicated program support through a single point of contact.
- AMN Healthcare established a single Managed Services and Analytics Provider (MSAP) program. The comprehensive, total talent solution includes nine service lines: workforce strategy and optimization, revenue cycle solutions, recruitment process optimization, float pool optimization, nursing, allied health, interim leadership, executive search and physician permanent placement.
Through the MSAP program, the new contingent labor solution has stabilized rates and improved the quality of HSHS clinicians. Analytics delivered through a Power BI tool allow HSHS to visualize all contingent labor on one digital platform and support decision-making.
- Time to fill open positions and labor costs have decreased dramatically. Despite increased patient demand, HSHS reduced the average time to fill open positions from 18 days to six days. In addition, the organization has reduced overtime hours by 27% and now has 24% lower clinician bill rates than the rest of the Midwest region.
The average annual cost savings from a balanced workforce strategy is between $5 million and $10 million. HSHS has also realized a $1.2 million annual cost savings from stabilized traveler utilization and a $3 million annual cost savings from bill rate strategy and reduction. Over a 12-month period, HSHS has achieved estimated total cost savings ranging between $9.2 million and $14.2 million.
A former HSHS executive said the partnership with AMN Healthcare has evolved into a trusting relationship with transparency, excellent communication and responsiveness to all needs, escalations and concerns.
"AMN has been able to provide resources for every possible area of need for our entire workforce," the HSHS executive said. "Through our strategic partnership, we have expanded across several service lines with more to come."