The holidays are notoriously difficult on medical facilities. And this holiday season should be no exception with the pandemic still lingering. As noted by Kelly Gooch of Becker’s Hospital Review, there are many unprecedented challenges in healthcare staffing that have made it more and more difficult to provide the care that patients need. Here are a few of the key challenges as noted in that article:
- Since February 2020, hospital employment has declined by nearly 94,000, including a decrease of more than 8,000 between August 2021 and September 2021, according to an Altarum analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data through September.
- Between 2019 and 2020, there was an increase in job vacancies for nursing personnel of up to 30 percent, according to an analysis of American Hospital Association survey data.
- Staff turnover caused by COVID-19 pressures has increased from 18 percent to 30 percent for some hospital departments, according to an analysis released in October by Premier, a group purchasing organization that works with more than 4,400 hospitals and health systems in the U.S.
- The analysis of workforce data released in October by Premier found that staffing shortages have cost hospitals $24 billion during the pandemic; an additional $3 billion was spent acquiring personal protective equipment for workers.
- Between February 2020 and August 2021, average hourly hospital wages increased by 8.5 percent.
The staffing shortages coupled with increased demand have put many healthcare facilities in dire straits. In good news, BlueSky Medical Staffing Software just released version 5.19 of their software which addresses the root of many of these challenges.
BlueSky has been empowering the healthcare and hospital staffing industry for over twenty years by solving expensive operational problems in business and organizations, and this latest release marks the first time a single platform technology can provide hospitals with complete control over their subcontractor relationships.
As the only healthcare-specific staffing software available on the market today, BlueSky has created an all-in-one platform that can help drive labor costs down and improve staffing efficiency at a time when the industry needs it most. In a nutshell, the latest release continues to improve on and consolidate the following critical features; and for the first time, all pioneered under their singular platform:
- Seamless Applicant Tracking System
- Easy to Use Vendor Management System
- Effective Staff and Nurse Scheduling System
- Job Order Entries and Job Posting System
- Consolidated Invoice and Payroll Suites for Clinical Talent and Contingent Labor Management, Including Staffing Workflows from Sourcing to Billing
- Regular Client-Focused Feature Updates Including an Ever Growing List of Integrations
- Scalable Software Tiers
- And More…
But how is this helping?
In a recent beta test of this software’s release with the Adventist Healthcare System, BlueSky successfully brought all contract labor management in-house. The savings from the newly implemented automation has provided uniformity of nurse and agency documentation, and provided real-time reporting for spend by department and historical trend analysis. This consolidated all contingent personnel relationships across a 28-hospital system to provide centralized control and reporting with the added benefit to quickly establish their own “self-service” agency. This newfound consolidation is responsible for eliminating many outside costs while helping their staffing operations run more efficiently during even the most demanding of seasons; a first for healthcare staffing.
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bluesky-medical-staffing-software-provider-112500296.html
