“For healthcare systems, this conversation often zeroes in
on nurses, but choosing to let other areas slide in terms of
retention can be equally detrimental to costs, as well as patient
care and satisfaction.”
Fluid Dynamics: Evolving Healthcare Landscape
Requires Innovative Approach to Multiple
Workforce Issues
Healthcare as an industry continues to evolve in
dramatic fashion, and 2018 will be no different.
Everything from reacting to legislative changes to the
Affordable Care Act to difficulties in staff recruitment
and retention, not to mention technological advances
that also bring challenges, is forcing administrators to be
more flexible than ever.
Across the country, in systems both large and small,
healthcare leaders are stepping up. Customized, unique
approaches to expand and improve core operational
issues are being crafted and rolled out, with the result
being systems that can adapt more quickly than ever to
their own specific circumstances. Take a look at some
major trends facing healthcare today, and how solutions
are being implemented.
Employee Turnover: Problem or Choice?
An online search for healthcare jobs will yield pages of
advertisements and recruiter postings. Obviously, the
jobs are there. But what’s being done to keep people in
those positions once they are hired? High turnover is
bad for business, in healthcare or any other industry
sector, because of the time and expense surrounding
the onboarding and training of new employees.
For healthcare systems, this conversation often zeroes
in on nurses, but choosing to let other areas slide in
terms of retention can be equally detrimental to costs,
as well as patient care and satisfaction. According to
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, replacement
healthcare costs for non-nurse and non-physical
healthcare jobs can cost as much as 20 percent of
annual pay (Long, 2017).
The problem is multifaceted, and so is the solution.
Clear changes, such as better and more quickly
obtained benefits, are becoming more commonplace.
Mentorship and residency programs are also gaining
importance alongside leadership training. All this is
being done with an eye toward heading off problems—
workload seen as too heavy, lack of growth
opportunities—before employees leave. Where to
begin? It seems a good starting point is to analyze what
areas of staff have the highest turnover, dig into the
reasons why those people are leaving and plan
corrective action (Bean, 2016).
Millennials as Caregivers:
Weighing the Pros and Cons
Other than Baby Boomers, it’s unlikely that any
generation in the last century has gotten quite as much
attention as Millennials, and much of that has been
negative. Entitled, the “participation trophy”
generation… the reviews are often unflattering. Be that
as it may, they are now the largest segment of the
workforce (Diesing, 2016), and these men and women
born between 1979 and 1994 are the face of
healthcare today and going into the future.
Despite the bad rap they get, or maybe because of it,
Millennials are not shy about the positives they bring to
the workforce. They are self-confident and firmly
believe in the value they provide. These employees are
change agents, often to the chagrin of more senior
leadership, and are unafraid to ask “Why?”
What this creates is an employee who is more than
willing to engage and learn new tasks, but also one who
prioritizes the work-life balance that older healthcare
workers were willing to forego. Savvy employers will
play to Millennials’ strengths, building team-based
HealthStream.com/contact • 800.521.0574 •