Recent trends indicate that the economy is recovering. This means unemployment rates are down and people are taking more risks when it comes to employment. Recently a survey by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that the percentage of healthcare workers voluntarily leaving their positions is at an all-time high. This trend shows that the usage of temporary labor is increasing, which is not only great news for the temporary staffing industry, but a great opportunity for these agencies to cash in on the changing market as well. A downside of this is managing temporary labor can cause a larger workload for hospital staff. There are options that hospitals may be unaware of to help simplify these additional processes.
According to the Healthcare Staffing Report: Employee ‘churn’ in healthcare industry recovers and then some, these employees are leaving their jobs to find something better fitted to their needs. Healthcare workers are more willing to risk giving up the security of a full time job to take on the flexibility of a temporary or travel assignment. As jobs open up and demand for nurse’s increase, more hospitals will want to employ temporary staff. Hiring temporary staff can have many benefits to the facility such as reduced risk, flexibility of additional staff in the event of gaps in coverage and seeing if there is a real need for a full time employee before hiring. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing: Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet states that 47% of healthcare facilities are planning to use temporary staffing agencies to fill these positions.
As more hospitals utilize temporary staffing, the ability to track of overall spend, utilization, hours worked, department usage and credentialing can become a great challenge. A Vendor Management System (VMS) consolidates all vendor usage into one, easy to use cloud based platform.
Useful features for both client and vendor include:
- Managed Payment Service
- Consolidated Billing Invoice
- Real time reporting
- Credential and documentation authorization
As the hiring of temporary employment rises, the need for an organization system also increases. Using a VMS as a tool will benefit both the client and vendor and speed up all of the necessary tasks of using supplemental labor.