The healthcare workforce will have 1.9 million job openings each year until 2033. Usually when healthcare’s workforce shortage is discussed, the main focus is “growing the pipeline.” But a pipeline strategy alone won’t be adequate to meet the demands for high-quality care.
During an executive roundtable at Becker’s Hospital Review 15th Annual Meeting, leaders from ECG Management Consultants led hospital and health system executives from around the nation in a discussion about strategies to support the healthcare workforce of the future.
Three key takeaways were:
- Healthcare organizations must change the work and the culture. The only way to meet the increased demands for care is by fundamentally changing how healthcare is delivered. Leaders must also adapt the culture of organizations to increase employee retention by fostering personal belonging and supporting teams with AI and other technologies.
- Healthcare must become easier. “We have to figure out how to make it easier for clinicians to do the work,” said a health IT leader at a mid-Atlantic health system said.
At this health system, after realizing that admissions and discharges were among nurses’ most burdensome tasks, leadership developed centralized admissions and discharge areas, staffed by dedicated nurses. Centralization of these activities improved efficiency and relieved bedside nurses from these time-consuming tasks. “This makes it easier for them [nurses] to do the work,” said the health IT leader.
Two leaders from a health system in the South described how their organization has successfully integrated virtual nursing into the care delivery model. Virtual nursing has reduced the length of stay, improved patient satisfaction and reduced the cognitive burden on the nurses. - Changing the work requires stakeholder collaboration. Leaders from health systems that have transformed care delivery highlighted the importance of having all functions at the table in changing the work. This includes physicians, nursing, operations, finance, IT, quality, educators, informaticists and others. Stakeholders must work together to develop governance structures and partnerships to change how the organization delivers care.
