Good News
The state of staffing in healthcare has been a front and center issue, not just during the pandemic, but before it as well, as the cumulative effects of things like burnout take their toll. The pandemic added a multitude of issues including health and safety concerns, vaccination requirements, and decreased work and revenues at organizations forced to stop elective surgeries.
There’s good news, although it doesn’t apply across the board. A recent JAMA-published case study describes how healthcare turnover rates increased 75% from 3.2% to 5.6% in 2020, but fell back to a more normal 3.7% in 2021.
The Exceptions
The two places where a rise and fall in turnover didn’t mirror the course of the pandemic were workers at long-term care facilities and physicians.
(Source: JAMA Health Forum)
Long-term care facilities were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic and their concerns have only been growing as other segments of the population look to resume more of a sense of normalcy. They continue to petition the government to extend pandemic measures and emphasized that more than 400,000 workers have left these jobs.
Meanwhile, physicians have had relatively low turnover compared to other healthcare professionals, but their rates didn’t fall as others did in 2021.
(Source: JAMA Health Forum)
Feelings vs. Reality
The rebound in several areas is encouraging, particularly because recent reports of sentiments toward resignation indicate there could still be a problem looming.
Or not.
It seems that sentiment doesn’t entirely match how the numbers play out. One recent study conducted by KLAS Research indicated that, “In the first quarter of 2021, 26% of nurses signaled their intentions to leave their jobs…[a]nd although nurses are consistently the most likely to report wanting to leave their jobs, physicians and allied health professionals in the third quarter of 2021 had near-equivalent rates of departure plans.”
There’s no reason that both studies can’t be accurate and it’s not terribly surprising that there would be more people who want to leave their jobs than actually do. We’ve seen the exact scenario play out during the pandemic with vaccination requirements. Far fewer people ended up resigning than said they would. This also means that there’s room to address concerns that are making people consider resigning before they actually do.
The Solution
Staffing is something we pay close attention to at Extract. Whether through staff attrition, hospital expansion, or just higher usage rates, departments like Health Information Management are stuck with the unenviable task of managing an inconsistent flow of unstructured documents with an uncertainty around staffing. Many times, the only way to keep up is to just put incoming faxes or scans in the patient’s file as an image rather than have all the discrete data entered.
We wouldn’t be presenting you with a problem without a solution though. We’ve got a software that can handle big volumes and figure out what your documents are, what data should be captured, which patient/order/encounter it should be connected to, where the document should be routed, all of it. It’s a problem we’ve solved, and one that has ramifications across specialties as clinicians can spend more time with their patients and less time looking for a number in a pdf.
If you think that all sounds great, we recently held a webinar where we explained in more detail exactly how our software can automate all of your incoming documents to achieve your staffing, data, and satisfaction goals. The recording is embedded just below, or if you’d prefer, send us a note and we’d be happy to get on the phone or schedule a personalized demonstration at your convenience.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.