Category Archives: Labor Shortages

‘We’re going to come out of this winning:’ Northwell CEO on labor challenges and the system’s biggest growth area

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New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health began 2023 with a low, but positive operating margin, but labor costs are expected to increase again this year on the back of recent union activity in the state. 

To offset such increases that were not anticipated in the 2023 budget, Northwell is evaluating opportunities to reduce expenses and increase revenue across the health system, which includes 21 hospitals and about 83,000 employees.

Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell, spoke to Becker’s Hospital Review about the health system’s biggest challenge this year, how it approaches cost-cutting and why outpatient care is its biggest growth area.

Editor’s note: Responses are lightly edited for length and clarity.

Question: Many health systems saw margins dip last year amid rising inflation, increased labor costs and declining patient volumes. How have you led Northwell through the challenges of last year? 

Michael Dowling: We ended 2022 with a low, but positive margin. We’ve been coming back from COVID quite successfully, and we’re back pretty much in all areas to where we were prior to the pandemic. Volumes have returned and we’re very busy. We came into 2023 with a positive budget and a positive margin. We anticipate that you’re always going to have challenges and disturbances, but it’s important to stay focused and deal with it. We have a very detailed strategic plan, which outlines our various goals, and we stick to it. 

Q: What is your top priority today?

MD: The biggest issue for us today is labor costs. We have lots of union activity in New York at the moment. There were various nurse strikes in New York City at the beginning of the year. None of our hospitals were involved in those deliberations, but some of those hospitals agreed to contracts that have increases that were not anticipated in anybody’s 2023 budget. That’s going to have an effect on us. We have negotiations ongoing with the nurses’ union, and have 10 unions overall. About 90 percent of Northwell’s facilities have unions, so the bottom line is we are going to have expenses as a result of these contracts that were not anticipated in the budget. I don’t know the final number on these contracts yet, but it’s definitely going to be more than what we anticipated. 

The unions in New York get a lot of government support and have become very empowered and quite aggressive. The bottom line is there’s more expense than we anticipated in our budget, so we need to figure out how to address that. We’re looking at everything across our health system to find expense reductions or revenue enhancements to be able to make up for the increased labor costs and be optimistic about ending the year with a positive margin. But we’re in a good place and are not like some other health systems that are struggling financially. 

Q: Where are the biggest opportunities to reduce expenses or increase revenue to offset the increased labor costs?

MD: It’s a combination of a lot of things. We have a detailed capital plan that we may slow down. We hire about 300 people a week, so maybe we’ll target that hiring into specific areas and not be as broad based as we thought we could be. We will examine if we have specific programs or initiatives we can curtail without doing any damage to our core mission. It will end up being a portfolio of items; it won’t be one big thing. On the revenue side, we’re working very hard to increase our neurosurgery, cardiac, cancer and orthopedic businesses. Over the next couple of months, all of those things will be taken into consideration. The bottom line is we are going to come out of this winning.

Q: Looking three or four years down the line, where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for Northwell?

MD: Our biggest growth is in outpatient care. A lot of surgeries are moving outpatient, so we have to get ahead of that. Some think we are only a hospital system, but only about 46 percent of our business is from our hospital sector today. Home care is going to grow phenomenally, especially given the new technology that’s available. Digital health will also dramatically expand. 

We’re also looking at expanding into new geographic areas and markets. It’s about positioning your offerings in places close to where people live, so you reduce the inconvenience of people having to travel long distances for care when it should be available to them closer to home. When you do that, you increase market share. We’re constantly increasing our market share by being very aggressive about going to where the customer is and providing the highest quality care that we can. Part of that is also being able to recruit top-line, quality physicians. When you do that, you attract new business because you have competencies that you didn’t have before. It’s a combination of all of these things, but there’s certainly no limit to the opportunities in front of us. We’re not in a world of challenges; we’re in a world of opportunity. The question is are we aggressive enough and do we have enough tolerance for some risk? We need to be as aggressive as we possibly can to take advantage of some of those opportunities. 

Q: What is the biggest challenge on the horizon for Northwell?

MD: The biggest challenge is the huge growth in government payer business — Medicare and Medicaid. The problem with Medicaid — especially in a union environment — is it doesn’t cover your costs. The government is a big part of a potential future issue there. By increasing Medicaid, the more of your business becomes Medicaid and the worse you end up doing, unless you can increase your commercial payer business to continue to cross-subsidize. We also have a lot of union negotiations over the next couple of months, which will put a strain on our 2023 budget, but we will resolve it.

Q: How do you see hospitals and health systems evolving as CMS, commercial payers and patients continue to push more services to outpatient settings, where they can arguably be performed at a higher quality and lower cost?

MD: I think it’s going to continue to grow. For example, Northwell has 23 hospitals — 21 of which it owns — yet it has 890 outpatient facilities. We’ve been ahead of this curve a long time. Our primary expansion is in ambulatory care, not in-hospital care. Like I said, only 46 percent of Northwell’s total business is its hospital business. If you’re relying on the hospital to be the core provider of the future, you’re going to lose. You’ve got to take a little bit of a hit by going out and expanding your ambulatory presence. But the more you expand ambulatory and grow in the right locations, the more you increase market share, which brings more of the necessary inpatient care back to your hospitals. Our hospitals are growing and getting busier in addition to our outpatient centers because we are growing market share. If we enter a new community and see 100 people, five of them will need to be hospitalized. That’s a new market. Ambulatory cannot be disassociated from its connection to the inpatient market. 

Q: Many financial experts are projecting a recession this year. How might that affect hospitals and health systems, and how can they best prepare? 

MD: Even if we do have a recession, it doesn’t mean that people don’t get sick. In fact, people’s problems increase. Our business does not slow down if we have a recession; our business will probably increase. On the revenue side, it won’t necessarily affect our government reimbursement, which we don’t do well on anyway. The things you worry about during a recession is if employers give up the coverage of their staff. Then those employees with no insurance may go on a state Medicaid program, and that might affect hospitals. 

In the healthcare sector, even in a recession, the need for hospital services actually increases. No recession could be as bad as what we experienced during COVID, yet we managed it. We had a problem that we didn’t even understand, and we worked through it. I think healthcare deserves an extraordinary credit for what was done during COVID. If there is a recession, we will deal with it. It’s just one of those things that happens, and we will respond to it in as comprehensive a way as we can. I can’t control it, but I can control our response. Leadership to me is about having a positive disposition; basically saying that whatever happens to you, you’re going to win. 

The No. 1 problem keeping hospital CEOs up at night

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Workforce problems in U.S. hospitals are troublesome enough for the American College of Healthcare Executives to devote a new category to them in its annual survey on hospital CEOs’ concerns. In the latest survey, executives identified “workforce challenges” as the No. 1 concern for the second year in a row.

Financial challenges, which consistently held the top spot for 16 years in a row until 2021, were listed the second-most pressing concern in the American College of Healthcare Executives’ annual survey.

Although workforce challenges were not seen as the most pressing concern for 16 years, they rocketed to the top quickly and rather universally for healthcare organizations in the past two years. Most CEOs (90 percent) ranked shortages of registered nurses as the most pressing within the category of workforce challenges, followed by shortages of technicians (83 percent) and burnout among non-physician staff (80 percent). 

Here are the most concerning issues hospital CEOs ranked in 2022, along with the score of how pressing CEOs find each issue. 

1. Workforce challenges (includes personnel shortages and staff burnout, among other issues) — 1.8 

2. Financial challenges — 2.8

3. Behavioral health and addiction issues — 5.2 

4. Patient safety and quality — 5.9

5. Governmental mandates — 5.9

6. Access to care — 6.0  

7. Patient satisfaction — 6.6

8. Physician-hospital relations — 7.6

9. Technology — 7.7 

10. Population health management — 8.6

11. Reorganization (mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and restructuring) — 8.7 

Within financial challenges, most CEOs (89 percent) ranked increasing costs for staff and supplies as the most pressing, followed by operating costs (66 percent) and Medicaid reimbursement (63 percent). CEOs are less concerned about price transparency and moving away from fee-for-service.

Seventy-eight percent of CEOs ranked lack of appropriate facilities/programs as most pressing within the category of behavioral health and addiction issues. That was followed by lack of funding for addressing behavioral health and addiction issues (77 percent).

The results are based on a survey administered to CEOs of community hospitals (non-federal, short-term, non-specialty hospitals). ACHE asked respondents to rank 11 issues affecting their hospitals in order of how pressing they are. Results are based on responses from 281 executives.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) workers stage largest-ever strike

Posted on by • Posted in Employee Compensation, Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Labor Organizing, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Labor Strike, Nurse Retention, Nurse Staffing, Nurses Shortage, Nurses Union, Workforce Engagement, Workforce Providers, Workforce Retention, Workforce Strategy • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/d62b14db92fb/the-weekly-gist-february-10-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Monday’s walkout of tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance staff was the largest in the NHS’s 75-year history.

Labor demonstrations have been ongoing across the past few months, as workers demand higher pay and better working conditions amid rampant national inflation and increased workloads.

Specific demands vary by union and nation within the United Kingdom. Welsh nurses called off their strike this week to review a proposal from Wales’ Labour Party-run government, while the Royal College of Nurses, the UK’s largest nursing union, has countered a nominal 5 percent pay increase proposal with demands for a five percent pay raise on top of inflation, which topped 10 percent in Britain in December. 

The Gist: A glance at our neighbors across the pond shows that the US healthcare system is not the only one currently experiencing a labor crisis.

The UK’s nationalized system has also failed to shield its workers from the combined impact of COVID burnout and inflation. But the NHS, as the UK’s largest employer and perennial object of political maneuvering, is more susceptible to organized labor actions. 

In contrast, American healthcare unions, which only covered 17 percent of the country’s nurses in 2021, must negotiate with local employers, whose responses to their demands vary.

While this may enhance the bargaining power of US health system leaders, it also heightens the risk that we will fail to adequately secure our nursing workforce, a key national resource already in short supply, for the longer term. 

The 6 challenges facing health care in 2023—and how to handle them

Posted on by • Posted in Challenge, Digital Health, Digital Health Initiatives, Financial Stewardship, Financial Strength, Financial Transparency, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health Equity, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Inflation, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Leadership, Market Consolidation, Payor Contracting, Quality Measures, Quality of Care, Quality Reporting, Recruiting, Talent Imperative, Talent Management, Talent Pipelines • Leave a comment
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With input from stakeholders across the industry, Modern Healthcare outlines six challenges health care is likely to face in 2023—and what leaders can do about them.

1. Financial difficulties

In 2023, health systems will likely continue to face financial difficulties due to ongoing staffing problems, reduced patient volumes, and rising inflation.

According to Tina Wheeler, U.S. health care leader at Deloitte, hospitals can expect wage growth to continue to increase even as they try to contain labor costs. They can also expect expenses, including for supplies and pharmaceuticals, to remain elevated.

Health systems are also no longer able to rely on federal Covid-19 relief funding to offset some of these rising costs. Cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates could also negatively impact revenue.

“You’re going to have all these forces that are counterproductive that you’re going to have to navigate,” Wheeler said.

In addition, Erik Swanson, SVP of data and analytics at Kaufman Hall, said the continued shift to outpatient care will likely affect hospitals’ profit margins.

“The reality is … those sites of care in many cases tend to be lower-cost ways of delivering care, so ultimately it could be beneficial to health systems as a whole, but only for those systems that are able to offer those services and have that footprint,” he said.

2. Health system mergers

Although hospital transactions have slowed in the last few years, market watchers say mergers are expected to rebound as health systems aim to spread their growing expenses over larger organizations and increase their bargaining leverage with insurers.

“There is going to be some organizational soul-searching for some health systems that might force them to affiliate, even though they prefer not to,” said Patrick Cross, a partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath. “Health systems are soliciting partners, not because they are on the verge of bankruptcy, but because they are looking at their crystal ball and not seeing an easy road ahead.”

Financial challenges may also lead more physician practices to join health systems, private-equity groups, larger practices, or insurance companies.

“Many independent physicians are really struggling with their ability to maintain their independence,” said Joshua Kaye, chair of U.S. health care practice at DLA Piper. “There will be a fair amount of deal activity. The question will be more about the size and specialty of the practices that will be part of the next consolidation wave.”

3. Recruiting and retaining staff

According to data from Fitch Ratings, health care job openings reached an all-time high of 9.2% in September 2022—more than double the average rate of 4.2% between 2010 and 2019. With this trend likely to continue, organizations will need to find effective ways to recruit and retain workers.

Currently, some organizations are upgrading their processes and technology to hire people more quickly. They are also creating service-level agreements between recruiting and hiring teams to ensure interviews are scheduled within 48 hours or decisions are made within 24 hours.

Eric Burch, executive principal of operations and workforce services at Vizient, also predicted that there will be a continued need for contract labors, so health systems will need to consider travel nurses in their staffing plans.

“It’s really important to approach contract labor vendors as a strategic partner,” Burch said. “So when you need the staff, it’s a partnership and they’re able to help you get to your goals, versus suddenly reaching out to them and they don’t know your needs when you’re in crisis.”

When it comes to retention, Tochi Iroku-Malize, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), said health systems are adequately compensated for their work and have enough staff to alleviate potential burnout.

AAFP also supports legislation to streamline prior authorization in the Medicare Advantage program and avoid additional cuts to Medicare payments, which will help physicians provide care to patients with less stress.

4. Payer-provider contract disputes

A potential recession, along with the ensuing job cuts that typically follow, would limit insurers’ commercial business, which is their most profitable product line. Instead, many people who lose their jobs will likely sign up for Medicaid plans, which is much less profitable.

Because of increased labor, supply, and infrastructure costs, Brad Ellis, senior director at Fitch Ratings, said providers could pressure insurers into increasing the amount they pay for services. This will lead insurers to passing these increased costs onto members’ premiums.

Currently, Ellis said insurers are keeping an eye on how legislators finalize rules to implement the No Surprise Act’s independent resolution process. Regulators will also begin issuing fines for payers who are not in compliance with the law’s price transparency requirement.

5. Investment in digital health

Much like 2022, investment in digital health is likely to remain strong but subdued in 2023.

“You’ll continue to see layoffs, and startup funding is going to be hard to come by,” said Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace Health.

However, investors and health care leaders say they expect a strong market for digital health technology, such as tools for revenue cycle management and hospital-at-home programs.

According to Julian Pham, founding and managing partner at Third Culture Capital, he expects corporations such as CVS Health to continue to invest in health tech companies and for there to be more digital health mergers and acquisitions overall.

In addition, he predicted that investors, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers will show more interest in digital therapeutics, which are software applications prescribed by clinicians.

“As a physician, I’ve always dreamed of a future where I could prescribe an app,” Pham said. “Is it the right time? Time will tell. A lot needs to happen in digital therapeutics and it’s going to be hard.”

6. Health equity efforts

This year, CMS will continue rolling out new health equity initiatives and quality measurements for providers and insurers who serve marketplace, Medicare, and Medicaid beneficiaries. Some new quality measures include maternal health, opioid related adverse events, and social need/risk factor screenings.

CMS, the Joint Commission, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance are also partnering together to establish standards for health equity and data collection.

In addition, HHS is slated to restore a rule under the Affordable Care Act that prohibits discrimination based on a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. According to experts, this rule may conflict with recently passed state laws that ban gender-affirming care for minors.

“It’s something that’s going to bear out in the courts and will likely lack clarity. We’ll see differences in what different courts decide,” said Lindsey Dawson, associate director of HIV policy and director of LGBTQ health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The Supreme Court acknowledged that there was this tension. So it’s an important place to watch and understand better moving forward.”

Improved earnings not enough to solve healthcare worker shortage

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https://mailchi.mp/a44243cd0759/the-weekly-gist-february-3-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

The healthcare sector has been navigating an intransigent staffing crisis since the widespread layoffs during the first few months of COVID. The graphic above uses Bureau of Labor Statistics data to illustrate the impact of this labor shock on both total employment and employee compensation. 

Across key healthcare settings, workplaces with the slowest recovery of total workers have seen the largest increases in employee earnings. Hospital employment largely tracked with the rest of the private sector; however, hospitals raised employee compensation by two percent more than the private sector, while recovering two percent fewer jobs.

It is important to note that the relationship between employment levels and employee compensation is not causal, as evidenced by the ongoing labor shortages in nursing facilities, despite boosting average pay over 20 percent. Rather, the data suggest that, for as long as the tight labor market persists, pay raises alone are not sufficient to recruit and retain talent. Plus, while inflation may be abating, it has still outpaced earnings growth since December 2021. 

Given that many healthcare workers saw pay bumps early in the pandemic, some are left still feeling underpaid, even if their compensation over the past three years has more than kept pace with inflation. 

Ketul J. Patel, Division President, Pacific Northwest; Chief Executive Officer, CommonSpirit Health; Virginia Mason Franciscan Health

Posted on by • Posted in Affordability, CEO, Challenge, Competition, Continuum of Care, Culture, Digital Health, Digital Health Initiatives, Diversified Workforce, Financial Stewardship, Financial Strength, Financial Viability, Health System, Home-Based Care, Home-Hospital Care, Innovation, Innovative Care Models, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Leadership, Leadership Culture, Leadership Listens, Leadership Rounding, Productivity, Quality of Care, Strategy, Thought Leaders, Virtual Care Strategy, Virtual Healthcare, Workforce Shortages, Workforce Solutions • Leave a comment
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There is no shortage of challenges to confront in healthcare today, from workforce shortages and burnout to innovation and health equity (and so much more). We’re committed to giving industry leaders a platform for sharing best practices and exchanging ideas that can improve care, operations and patient outcomes.


Check out this podcast interview with Ketul J. Patel, CEO at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and division president, Pacific Northwest at CommonSpirit Health, for his insights on where healthcare is headed in the future.

In this episode, we are joined by Ketul J. Patel, Division President, Pacific Northwest; Chief Executive Officer, CommonSpirit Health; Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, to discuss his background & what led him to executive healthcare leadership, challenges surrounding workforce shortages, the importance of having a strong workplace culture, and more.

Adverse events in inpatient care still common

Posted on by • Posted in Adverse Events, Adverse Outcomes, Drug Administration Errors, Employee Staffing Shortage, Labor Shortages, Outpatient Care, Outpatient Migration, Outpatient Surgery, Preventable Errors, Quality, Quality Measures, Quality of Care, Quality Reporting • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/59374d8d7306/the-weekly-gist-january-13-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

Published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, this concerning study found that seven percent of all inpatient hospital admissions feature at least one preventable adverse event, and that nearly a quarter of all adverse events are preventable, with drug administration errors the most frequent. While the complexities behind studying adverse events make it difficult to measure progress over time, the authors assert that these episodes are still far too common, and advocate for establishing standard approaches to measure the frequency of adverse events more reliably. 

The Gist: Health systems had been making at least some progress in their decades-long effort to reduce adverse events before COVID turned the industry upside down, drawing clinical leaders’ focus to the crisis and upending industry benchmarks. 

Today’s short-staffed, traveler-dependent labor force presents yet another challenge to hospitals aiming to achieve quality benchmarks. COVID has also accelerated the outpatient shift, heightening the importance of tracking quality metrics in non-hospital settings. 

As more complex procedures are performed in ambulatory surgery centers, and more hospital care is administered at home, there’s also a concern that hospital-based quality measures are not telling the whole story on the state of patient safety. 

A rethinking of quality metrics and processes to measure and prevent adverse events across the continuum is long overdue.  

A contentious time for payer-provider negotiations

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https://mailchi.mp/59374d8d7306/the-weekly-gist-january-13-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

In our decades of working in healthcare, we’ve never seen a time when payer-provider negotiations have been more tense. Emboldened insurers, having seen strong growth during the pandemic, are entering contract negotiations with an aggressive posture.

“They weren’t even willing to discuss a rate increase,” one CFO shared as he described his health system’s recent negotiations with a large national insurer. “The plan’s opening salvo was a fifteen percent rate cut!”

Health systems are feeling lucky to get even a two or three percent rate bump, well short of the historical average of seven percent—and far short of what would be needed to account for skyrocketing labor, supply, and drug costs. According to executives we work with, efforts to describe the current labor crisis and resulting cost impacts with payers are largely falling on deaf ears.  
 
This scenario is playing out in markets across the country, with more insurers and health systems announcing that they are “terming” their contract, publicly stating they will cut ties should the stalemate in negotiations persist.

Speaking off the record, a system executive shared how this played out for them. With negotiations at an impasse, a large insurer began the process of notifying beneficiaries that the system would soon be out-of-network, and patients would be reassigned to new primary care providers. The health plan assumed that the other systems in the market would see this as a growth opportunity—and was shocked when they discovered that other providers were already operating at capacity, unable to accommodate additional patients from the “terminated” system. 

Mounting concerns about access brought the plan back to the table. Even in the best of times, a major insurer cutting ties with a health system is extremely disruptive for consumers, who must shift their care to new providers or pay out-of-network rates. But given current capacity challenges in hospitals nationwide, major network disruptions can be even more dire for patients—and may force payers and providers to walk back from the brink of contract termination. 

Health systems’ minimum wage skyrockets

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https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/health-systems-minimum-wage-skyrockets.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter

The percentage of healthcare organizations with an internal minimum wage of $15 or higher increased significantly over the last year, according to the “2022 Health Care Staff Compensation Survey” from SullivanCotter.

In 2021, less than 30 percent of healthcare organizations had an internal minimum wage of $15 per hour or more; this year, nearly 70 percent do. Some health systems are increasing the internal minimum wage to stay competitive amid staffing shortages and rising inflation. Others are increasing hourly rates as a result of union negotiations.

Health systems reported large increases in overall staff salaries, wages and benefits this year, and many expect to see increases in 2023 as well.

Here is how the internal minimum wage rates changed over the last year:

1. Less than $10 per hour
2021: 2.9 percent
2022: 2.2 percent

2. $10 per hour
2021: 14.7 percent
2022: 5 percent

3. $11 per hour
2021: 13.7 percent
2022: 3.9 percent

4. $12 per hour
2021: 12.7 percent
2022: 7.8 percent

5. $13 per hour
2021: 12.7 percent
2022: 6.1 percent

6. $14 per hour
2021: 14.7 percent
2022: 5.6 percent

7. $15 per hour
2021: 26.5 percent
2022: 53.9 percent

8. More than $15 per hour
2021: 2 percent
2022: 15.6 percent

Why are fewer hospital admissions coming from the emergency department?

Posted on by • Posted in Admitting, Emergency Care, Emergency Care Acuity, Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Admissions, Hospital Capacity, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Nurses Shortage, State of the Union • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/ad2d38fe8ab3/the-weekly-gist-january-6-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

At a recent health system retreat, the CFO shared data describing a trend we’ve observed at a number of systems: for the past few months, emergency department (ED) volumes have been up, but the percentage of patients admitted through the ED is precipitously down.

The CFO walked to through a run of data to diagnose possible causes of this “uncoupling” of ED visits and inpatient admissions. Overall, the severity of patients coming to the ED was higher compared to 2019, so it didn’t appear that the ED was being flooded with low-level cases that didn’t merit admission. Apart from the recent spike in respiratory illness brought on by the “tripledemic” of flu, COVID and RSV, there wasn’t a noteworthy change in case mix, or the types of patients and conditions being evaluated in the emergency room. (Fewer COVID patients were admitted compared to 2021, but that wasn’t enough to account for the decline.) The physicians staffing the ED hadn’t changed, so a shift in practice patterns was also unlikely. 
 
A physician leader attending the retreat spoke up from the audience: “I can diagnose this for you. I work in the ED, and the problem is we can’t move them. Patients are sitting in the ED, in hallways, in observation, sometimes for days, because we can’t get a bed on the floor. The whole time we are treating them, and many of them get better, and we’re able to discharge them before a bed frees up.”

With nursing shortages and other staffing challenges, many hospitals have been unable to run at full capacity even if the demand for beds is there. So total admissions may be down, even if the hospital feels like it’s bursting at the seams.

The current staffing crisis not only presents a business challenge, but also adversely impacts patient experience, and makes it more difficult to deliver the highest quality care. A good reminder of the complexity of hospital operations, where strain in one part of the system will quickly impact the performance of other parts of the care delivery continuum.