Staffing has become alarmingly tight in health care, driven by aging and a less healthy population, an aging workforce, bureaucratic demands from payers that disincentivize staff, and the traumas of the COVID-19 crisis and increasing violence against staff. Temps, often traveling long distances, have been making up the difference between supply and demand in staffing. The critical shortage has interfered with well-intentioned regulatory goals.
ShiftMed, though, has been taking a sleeker and friendlier direction in temporary staffing.
On the institutional side, pressures to reduce staff costs intersect with desperate needs to fill staffing gaps. ShiftMed serves hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and in-home providers.
On the nurses’ side, staff want high-quality placements at times that are convenient for them. They often occupy a sandwich generation that needs to work around the schedules of their children and elderly parents.
I talked to Craig Allan Ahrens, Chief Growth Officer, about the technology ShiftMed uses to streamline the hiring of temporary workers. Even more significant, perhaps, is how they build supportive relationships with both hospitals and the temp workers they hire through their platform.
Automating the onboarding process
Hiring a temp is a process with several stages: recruitment, provisioning (such as getting them accounts in the hospital’s system), and training.
Forms allow a nurse to create a profile, which includes not only their credentials and particular expertise (such as geriatrics) but also personal details such as what times of the week they want to work. ShiftMed analyzes the profiles and presents potential hires to employers.
Provisioning and training are highly specific to each institution, typically taking up to 15 weeks. So ShiftMed works with the hospital to automate the processes and drastically reduce the time required. Time-consuming processes based on spreadsheets, such as scheduling, are replaced with modern automated systems.
ShiftMed also collects data on their nurses and institutions to look for possible process improvements. For instance, they might notice that a nurse is turning down opportunities in another part of the region and ask whether the nurse needs transportation. ShiftMed maintains relationships with ride services such as UberHealth, an Uber-sponsored service dedicated to health care.
Over time, ShiftMed’s AI can detect patterns in a nurse’s behavior and improve their recommendations to meet the nurse’s as well as the hospital’s needs. And this kind of service takes us to the larger question of relationship-building.
Meeting the needs of clients
Ahrens stressed that ShiftMed is not just a market; it wants to actively contribute to nurses’ careers and to hospitals’ strategic plans to create a stable workforce across all its labor pools.
On the hospital side, they suggest ways to maximize the mix of temporary staff and full hires. For instance, when a nurse in one facility goes on maternity leave, the hospital might offer temp work to a nurse in another facility to cover the gap. Eventually, ShiftMed hopes that different institutions will collaborate to share staff across the country for a nationwide, hospital-driven network.
As part of staff optimization, ShiftMed might note when a temp position could be filled by a less experienced nurse, such as a LPN instead of an RN.
We know that “gig” jobs can disadvantage workers through downward pressure on wages and a lack of job security. This is less likely to happen in nursing because the shortage of staff is not likely to be alleviated soon. Nevertheless, ShiftMed takes special steps to protect its clients.
Whereas most gig services treat employees as independent contractors and pay them with a 1099 tax form, ShiftMed signs up employees as full hires with W2 forms. Making someone a full hire is particularly important because of the risks and liability issues associated with 1099 models in many states.
ShiftMed also makes sure that hospitals follow union rules for the temps hired, such as on scheduling and overtime. Temping is a good way for both the nurse and the institution to try each other out before creating a permanent position.
ShiftMed can even ease the nurse’s burden by sending a meal to their home while they’re working, so that their family doesn’t miss out on a good meal in the nurse’s absence.
I think that ShiftMed’s commitment to its clients’ wellbeing shows what can be done when technology is employed in a humane, respectful way. Sharing staff more efficiently might reduce some of the negative effects of the current crisis in health care, while policy-makers find lasting solutions.
