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Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a significant rise in health care workers departing the industry, leaving hospitals and health care systems struggling to maintain compliance with state and federal health care regulations and stay financially solvent. To address these challenges, hospitals have become creative and flexible in their employment practices while analyzing the health care and employment law implications.
Travel Nurse Staffing Agencies
One solution to nursing shortages has been to hire temporary “travel” nurses. These nurses are typically employed by temporary nurse staffing agencies that negotiate contracts with hospitals and health care systems. While widely utilized, reliance on staffing agencies is more of a Band-Aid than a permanent solution, leaving smaller hospital systems struggling to meet the cost of nursing labor. Furthermore, once the travel nurses leave, hospitals must search for replacements, exacerbating nursing shortages and turnover in the health care workforce.
Internal Staffing Model
To avoid reliance on staffing agencies, some hospitals have created internal staffing models to recruit and hire temporary staffing directly, competing with external nurse staffing agencies. However, creating such a model requires additional financial capital and resources to manage what is essentially an expanded human resource department. Hospitals must also consider how this approach affects their current nursing population, including those who are union members.
Targeted Hiring and Alternative Industry Recruitment
Human resource and talent management teams have introduced new ideas to attract the best talent. Targeted hiring is one approach that uses data to track progress relative to specific goals, such as partnering with nursing school programs to create a candidate pipeline or establishing clinical practicum programs for interested students. Health care systems are also hiring and training individuals from nonmedical backgrounds to fill administrative tasks that do not require a nursing license.
Retaining Talent
While hiring new nurses is important, retaining existing talent is key. Hospitals have offered more flexible schedules, allowing staff to work for multiple hospitals or clinical settings or choose the departments in which they’d prefer to work, reducing burnout and increasing job satisfaction. Employers must also be mindful of wage and hour laws, ensuring employees are paid for all hours worked, including overtime, depending on the employee’s classification across work locations.
Takeaways
Ultimately, individual hospitals must assess their financial condition and the competing risks of inadequate staffing and the high cost of staffing to determine which approach is best. These approaches must be implemented in legal compliance with all health care and employment rules and regulations.
