KLAS Research recently published the results gathered from their 2022 Digital Health Investment Symposium. The gathering and associate survey included executives from a variety of stakeholder organizations including investors, healthcare IT companies, and healthcare providers. Takeaways from the gathering showed that short-term solutions to issues like staffing are working to bridge the gap, but that providers need long-term, structural changes to work to ensure they’ll have a stable workforce in the future.
The top issues that the executives discussed were identified in advance through a survey and included the patient experience, workforce management, the clinician experience, and siloed technology and data. Patient experience is something that healthcare providers have faith can, and is, being tackled, the rest of the categories spurred less confidence.
Staffing has been a huge pain point, not just for providers, but for everyone who was surveyed by KLAS. There were a handful of exceptions in the vendor respondents, but of course those came among vendors offering solutions for staffing issues. As we mentioned earlier, the problem isn’t just that the staffing issues exist, it’s that the strategies for mitigating their impact are largely unsustainable. More organizations are resorting to throwing money at the problem rather than working on more systemic quality of life issues.
Group discussion questions focused on staffing solutions and lasting workforce stability. Some of the key takeaways that were highlighted included:
Creating float pools resulting in both better staff coverage and increased flexibility for workers.
End-users of technology products don’t feel their voices are being heard.
New technology isn’t the answer if people don’t want to use it. It needs to either work in partnership with current workflows or transform them for the better.
The payer-provider relationship is still extremely burdensome and needs to be further automated.
Scalable and cost-effective technology is king.
Top of licensure is where employees should be working.
From the vendor perspective, this all makes sense. We know that IT staff are very busy and that adding to their implementation calendars can be nearly impossible. When staff resources are so valuable, health systems don’t have the luxury of trying out a new technology to see if it works because of the associated IT hours it would also burn through.
While it may account for why our sales cycle is longer than we’d like, it’s important for us to fully inform our prospects, mapping out IT requirements, getting an accurate look at the savings to be had over and above the cost of the software, and finding spots in their workflow that can change for everyone’s benefit (no more barcode labels).
We’re proud that when healthcare organizations become Extract customers, they stay with us. Our document automation software empowers data entry staff to be more efficient, keeps employees at the top of their licensure, and provides more complete and accurate data for clinicians. If you’re interested in how we can do all that while still providing cost savings, please get in touch and we’d be happy to explain how it works or show you a demonstration.
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.