How to Effectively Manage Locum Tenens and Contingent Labor in 2018
It’s difficult to recall a time when the healthcare industry was in such a state of flux and turmoil. A flood of new patients from the Affordable Care Act and an aging population have dramatically increased demand on hospitals and healthcare providers in recent years. But the uncertainty surrounding regulatory policy and the fear of declining reimbursements are putting pressure on hospital administrators to aggressively pursue healthcare cost containment programs.
The RINGO platform was designed to alleviate the burden of tracking and managing temporary labor. Because we specialize in healthcare facilities from Ambulatory Surgical Centers and Diagnostic Facilities to full-service Hospital systems, we have a high level of expertise and understanding in this area. One thing we often hear after onboarding a new facility is the sigh of relief that comes from simply knowing one’s labor figures with absolute certainty. This transparency gives all budgetary stakeholders, from Nurse Managers to Chief Financial Officers, the clarity and visibility to project their expenses and make better decisions.
A recent article in Becker’s Hospital Review speaks directly to this issue, and offers tips on “how to manage their expensive—and highly valuable—staff as declining reimbursement exerts downward pressure on operating costs.” One of the top recommendations is to control expenses with a data-driven strategy for tracking labor.
“Best practice labor infrastructure includes decisions driven by solid-source data—a single data source accessible by all levels of leadership—as well as a consistent method to evaluate performance across leadership,” states the piece.
The RINGO platform provides exactly this type of single-source, data-driven solution. Coordinating your contingent labor spend on the RINGO platform grants full operational and budgetary transparency for every management level. Moreover, nurse managers can track credentialing on the system to ensure the entire team is fully compliant with recent education and labor standards.
The platform itself was built with healthcare providers in mind, and has grown over the years to accommodate changes in the industry, all based on requests from our clients. We strive to simplify processes as much as possible, while also providing easy, intuitive access to data and reporting. Making it easy to navigate was a core mantra of our development team, because the system should be light, flexible, and user-friendly. Everything from submitting electronic timesheets and tracking credentials to providing up-to-the-minute financial reporting for quick decision-making is streamlined within the RINGO process.
It’s important to also note that RINGO is a vendor neutral management system. Our goal was to create a system that could be easily adopted without making any changes to your current staffing procedures. This is a critical distinction that has allowed us to grow significantly over the years and add value to the platform. Every stakeholder should view the platform in a positive light, because process improvement, efficiency and transparency benefit all parties, and enable healthcare professionals to focus on what they do best: treating patients.
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