Healthcare companies are almost uniformly facing staffing issues. The understaffed positions range throughout the organization. While some areas are having a harder time with doctors, nurses, & PAs, others are struggling with maintenance and administrative roles. Many unfortunate organizations are having a hard time across the board.
Healthcare leaders are seeking ways to mitigate staffing shortages. Some are working on short-term solutions for their organizations, while others are taking action to curb staffing shortages in the long run. Their efforts combine tech, training, and good old-fashioned positive feedback.
Training and Staff Development
Professional development is at the heart of many retention programs. We covered some of these efforts in an August article, “Healthcare Challenge in Workforce Management: Staffing Shortage.”
In addition to development, healthcare companies are deploying new technology to help ease the burden on staff. From remote monitoring to telehealth tech, automation and AI reduce the time to provide care and look after patients without compromise.
Our own approach on the tech side, the Virtual Intake Portal, helps with administrative tasks for the admissions process. It improves the speed at which patients are admitted while ensuring all documentation is well organized.
From the beginning to the end of the patient experience, healthcare executives are looking for tech to help reduce the burden on staff.
Hearing the Positive
If you have spent time as a patient in a hospital, you were likely peppered with questions about how you are doing… sometimes very specific questions. Patients can expect additional questionnaires about their time in care after a stay. These are all designed to identify areas of opportunity to improve. This is a noble goal.
But, in pursuit of identifying shortcomings, some organizations have overlooked the areas that are going well. In so doing, they miss the opportunities to provide the staff with positive feedback along with areas of improvement.
FeedTrail, led by Stephanie Alexander & Paul Jaglowski, is helping healthcare organizations find and share positive feedback with staff, believing this can reduce turnover.
What is unique about their approach is the direct feedback staff receives. It is not just a tabulated score or an end-of-month report. In MedCity News, we read that individual positive feedback is shared directly with named staff members each week. The feedback comes close on the heels of the patient visit.
While enabled by technology, the draw here is the balance it brings to what medical teams hear. After a litany of what is not right, it is easy to be discouraged. Professionals know that there is always room for improvement. But if that consumes our feedback, it is reasonable for staff to feel unappreciated and seek to move on. It will be interesting to see the impact of the FeedTail approach.
In an age when organizations seem preoccupied with the latest tech, it is easy to lose sight of the human factor. By placing the patient and the staff at the center, we can remain focused on where technology can truly help, separating that from simple (and distracting) tech glitz.
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