Category Archives: Talent Imperative

‘A triple whammy’: Why hospitals are struggling financially amid the delta surge

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Coronavirus Delta Variant, Coronavirus Mutation, Deferred Healthcare, Financially Distressed, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Spend Management, Net Income, Nonoperating Income, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Recruiting, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management, Unvaccinated, Vaccination, Vaccine, Vaccine Efficacy, Vaccine Hesitancy Rate, Vaccine Safety, Vaccine Skepticism, Vaccine Supply • Leave a comment
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2021/10/07/hospital-struggles?utm_source=public_db&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021oct07&utm_content=public_headline_public_x_x_x_x&elq_cid=4778863&x_id=
Hospitals were struggling before the pandemic. Now they face financial disaster (opinion) - CNN

n addition to treating an influx of Covid-19 patients, many hospitals are struggling with what one administrator calls a “triple whammy” of financial burdens—stemming from plummeting revenue, higher labor costs, and reduced relief funds, Christopher Rowland reports for the Washington Post.

Hospitals in less-vaccinated areas face spiking labor costs

In areas with low vaccination rates, particularly in southern and rural communities, hospitals have been overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, exacerbating labor shortages as workers burn out or leave for more lucrative positions, Rowland reports.

“The workforce issue is just dire,” Stacey Hughes, EVP of government relations and policy for the American Hospital Association (AHA), said. “The delta variant has wreaked significant havoc on hospitals and health systems.”

In Louisiana, Mary Ellen Pratt, CEO of St. James Parish Hospital, said many nurses quit due to the grueling conditions as Covid-19 cases spiked. “I didn’t have any extra money to incentivize my staff to pick up additional shifts,” she said. “This is coming out of bottom-line money I don’t have.”

Separately, Lisa Smithgall, SVP and chief nursing executive at Ballad Health, said the health system—which has 21 hospitals in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia—has faced similar problems retaining staff amid Covid-19 surges.

“We knew we were at risk in our region because of where we live and because of our vaccination rate being so poor,” Smithgall said. “At one point, we were seeing four or five nurse resignations per week. They couldn’t do it again; they emotionally didn’t have it. They were so upset with our community.”

To fill in these growing gaps in their workforce, many hospitals have had to turn to costly contract workers, Rowland reports—a significant financial burden that further strains hospitals’ resources.

For example, Ballad Health went from hiring fewer than 75 contract nurses before the pandemic to 150 in August 2020 and 450 in August 2021. Moreover, according to Smithgall, contract nurses previously made double or triple what permanent staff nurses made, but now Ballad sometimes has to pay up to seven times as much for contract nurses as hospitals compete for workers to fill shifts.

Delayed elective surgeries deepen hospitals’ financial struggles

Many hospitals, including those in areas with high vaccination rates, have delayed elective surgeries, a crucial source of revenue, amid nationwide surges in Covid-19 cases, Rowland reports—further compounding financial struggles for many organizations.

On Aug. 26, Ballad Health postponed a long list of elective surgeries—including hernia repair, cardiac and interventional radiology procedures, joint replacements, and nonessential spine surgery—to preserve space in its hospitals and conserve workers. Ballad is now allowing elective surgeries again, but only for a limited number of procedures that do not require overnight stays.

Similarly, St. Charles Health System in Oregon postponed elective surgeries in August “while we responded to a surge that was significantly greater and much more sudden than the surge in 2020,” Matt Swafford, the health system’s VP and CFO, said.

According to Swafford, the health system lost $5 million a week through August and September, around $1 million of which was repayment of emergency advances on Medicare reimbursements from last year.

“I don’t think anybody saw this level of surge coming in 2021 after what we saw in 2020,” he said. “We’re just not equipped to be able to simultaneously respond to the urgent needs of the community [for more typical surgeries and care] at the same time that a third of our beds are occupied by highly infective Covid patients.”

Many hospitals likely to end the year at a deficit

Further compounding the issue, according to Moody’s Investors Service, is that the provider relief funds that previously made up 43% of operating cash flow at nonprofit and government-run hospitals in the United States are now dwindling down.

In addition, the latest portion of provider relief funds to be distributed must be based on expenses incurred by hospitals before March 31, 2021, which don’t account for months of the delta surge, Rowland reports.

Premier, a group purchasing and technology company serving more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems, analyzed payroll data of 650 hospitals and found that U.S. hospitals have spent a total of $24 billion a year during the pandemic to cover excess labor costs, primarily for overtime and contract nurses. This was an increase of 63% from October 2019 to July 2021, Rowland reports, with hospitals in the Upper Midwest and across the South seeing the largest increases.

“It’s going to leave them huge deficits that they are going to have to work out of for years to come,” Michael Alkire, Premier’s CEO, said.

Stark divide in industry outlook

Posted on by • Posted in Employee, Employee Burnout, Employee Morale, Employee Motivation, Employee Optimism, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Recruiting, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment
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Nearly three in five U.S. health care workers are optimistic about where the industry is headed, according to a new poll released today by Morning Consult.

Why it matters: Amid increasing concerns about burnout in health care and workforce shortages, the poll of more than 900 workers between Sept. 2–8 shows there is still a lot of optimism about the health care profession even as workers deal with stressful working conditions.

A common theme among the responses was the message that “working in healthcare is hard and it’s something that should only be done if you are completely committed to it.”

  • Responses ranged from one worker who said “it’s a great career,” to another who said young people should avoid the field “unless you have a death wish.”
  • The poll also found men were more likely than women to be optimistic about the future of the health care industry.

Labor Shortage extends beyond Nursing, beyond Hospitals

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Healthcare Industry, Healthcare Providers, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Recruiting, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management, Value Proposition • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/60a059924012/the-weekly-gist-september-10-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

How Could You Be Affected by the Healthcare Labor Shortage? - Right Way Medical

The typical media coverage of the healthcare workforce crisis often focuses on the acute shortage of hospital-based nurses. For instance, the hospital forced to close a unit as nurses, burned out after 18 months of extra shifts taking care of COVID patients, leave for lower-stress, more predictable jobs in outpatient facilities or doctors’ offices.

But we’re hearing about a reverse trend in recent conversations with health system leaders. Instead of outpatient settings benefiting from an influx of nursing talent, ambulatory leaders report that nurses are now leaving for hospital or travel nursing positions that offer higher salaries and large sign-on bonuses. That’s forcing non-hospital settings to reduce operating room and endoscopy capacity.

Nor are shortages just in the nursing workforce. One system executive lamented that they had to cancel several non-emergent cardiac surgeries, not due to nurse staffing challenges; rather, they were short on surgical technicians. “Surgical techs aren’t leaving because of COVID,” the executive shared, “they’re leaving because the labor market is so strong, and they can make the same money doing something entirely different.” 

For lower-wage workers in particular, the old value proposition of working for a health system, centered around good benefits, continuing education, and a long-term career path, isn’t providing the boost it used to. Workers are willing to trade those for improved work-life balance, predictability, and the perception of a “safer” workplace.

Stabilizing the healthcare workforce will ultimately require providers to rethink job design, the allocation of talent across settings of care, and the integration of technology in workflow. And it will require re-anchoring the work in the mission of serving the community.

But in the short term, many health systems will find themselves having to pay more to retain key workers, including but not limited to hospital nurses, to maintain patient access to care. 
 

A bidding war for critical nursing talent

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Travelers, Nurses, Recruiting, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/60a059924012/the-weekly-gist-september-10-2021?e=d1e747d2d8https://mailchi.mp/60a059924012/the-weekly-gist-september-10-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

As the pandemic rages on, hospitals across the country are experiencing significant labor shortages for critical clinical roles. In the graphic above, we highlight the shortage of nursing talent, perhaps the most sought-after role for which health systems are struggling to hire.

Even before the current COVID surge, many nurses reported feeling dissatisfied or feeling burned out. In a May 2021 survey, more than one in five nurses said they were considering leaving their current jobs, citing insufficient staffing, workload, and the emotional toll of the work. Many health systems are offering lucrative incentives, such as five-figure signing bonuses, to fill immediate critical care needs, and to address the growing backlog of patients returning for delayed care.

As more nurses quit or retire from their permanent positions, health systems are being forced to fill workforce gaps by luring temporary talent at much higher costs (now cresting $8K a week to fund a single travel nurse in some parts of the country). Travel nurse demand reached an all-time high in August, up almost 40 percent from the previous peak in December 2020. As they struggle to fill essential openings, hospital leaders must also focus on keeping the current nursing staff engaged—a challenge that only gets harder as staff nurses compare their salaries to those paid to the temporary colleagues working alongside them.

Private equity as an enabler of Boomer doctor retirements

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Physician, Physician Compensation, Physician Employment, Physician Exit Strategy, Physician Independence, Physician Practice Acquisition, Physician Practice Management, Physician Practice Valuation, Physician Retirement, Physician Staffing, Private Equity, Strategy, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/13ef4dd36d77/the-weekly-gist-august-27-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

How Much Money Does a Doctor Need to Retire? — Finity Group, LLC

There’s been a lot of hand wringing over the ongoing feeding frenzy among private equity (PE) firms for physician practice acquisition, which has caused health system executives everywhere to worry about the displacement effect on physician engagement strategies (not to mention the inflationary impact on practice valuations).

While we’ve long believed that PE firms are not long-term owners of practices, instead playing a roll-up function that will ultimately end in broader aggregation by vertically-integrated insurance companies, a recent conversation with one system CEO reframed the phenomenon in a way we hadn’t thought of before. It’s all about a demographic shift, she argued.

There’s a generation of Boomer-aged doctors who followed their entrepreneurial calling and started their own practices, and are now nearing retirement age without an obvious path to exit the business. Many didn’t plan for retirement—rather than a 401(k), what they have is equity in the practice they built.

What the PE industry is doing now is basically helping those docs transition out of practice by monetizing their next ten years of income in the form of a lump-sum cash payout. You could have predicted this phenomenon decades ago.

The real question is what happens to the younger generations of doctors left behind, who have another 20 or 30 years of practice ahead of them? Will they want to work in a PE-owned (or insurer-owned) setting, or would they prefer health system employment—or something else entirely?

The answer to that question will determine the shape of physician practice for decades to come…at least until the Millennials start pondering their own retirement.

Shortage of healthcare workers amid high demand for jobs

Posted on by • Posted in Deferred Healthcare, Demand, Employee Retention, Employee Retirement, Employee Satisfaction, Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Labor Shortages, Nurse Staffing, Nurses Shortage, Recruiting, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/13ef4dd36d77/the-weekly-gist-august-27-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

The US now has more job openings than any time in history—and the mismatch in workforce supply and demand in the broader economy is even more acute in the healthcare sector. While the industry saw significant job losses in April 2020, employment in many healthcare subsectors quickly rebounded to slightly below pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

While ambulatory and hospital employment has mostly recovered, employment in nursing and residential care facilities has continued to decline. 

Healthcare’s sluggish return to pre-pandemic employment levels is not for lack of demand. The number of job listings has grown nearly 30 percent since the second quarter of 2020, to nearly 4.5M openings, while new hires have flatlined, resulting in over half of healthcare job listings remaining unfilled as of Q2 2021. 

In a recent McKinsey & Company survey of over 100 large US hospitals, health system executives ranked workforce shortages among nurses and clinical staff as their greatest barrier to increasing capacity.

Amid the current COVID surge, many systems are offering sizeable bonuses to attract new employees. These strategies will be critical across the next year, as systems look to reduce spending on costly travel nurses, manage COVID surges while continuing to offer elective care, and forestall further burnout.

But longer term, rethinking job functions, integrating new technology and finding ways to educate and upskill critical clinical talent will be key to winning the war for talent.

RN hourly wage in 10 US metro areas

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Nurse Staffing, Nurses, Nurses Advance Practice, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Leadership, Nurses Shortage, Nurses Union, Recruiting, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/rn-hourly-wage-in-10-us-metro-areas.html?origin=BHRE&utm_source=BHRE&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter&oly_enc_id=2893H2397267F7G
RN Salary -Registered Nurse wages and employment information

The hourly mean wage for registered nurses in the U.S. is $38.47, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest occupational employment and wage statistics survey.

Among 10 metropolitan areas with the highest employment level in registered nurses, registered nurses have the highest hourly mean wage in the Los Angeles area and the lowest in the Miami area.

Ten hourly mean wages for RNs by metropolitan area, in descending order:

1. Los Angeles: $54.38

2. Boston: $47.79

3. New York City: $45.63

4. Houston: $40.85

5. Washington, D.C.: $40.14

6. Philadelphia: $38.45

7. Dallas: $37.50

8. Chicago: $37.48

9. Detroit: $36.64

10. Miami: $34.76 

CFOs working around cost pressures, labor availability

Posted on by • Posted in CFO, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Economic Indicators, Economic Outlook, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Market Outlook, Market Trends, Market Uncertainty, Recruiting, Talent, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment
https://www.cfodive.com/news/cfos-working-around-cost-pressures-labor-availability/603566/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202021-07-20%20CFO%20Dive%20%5Bissue:35550%5D&utm_term=CFO%20Dive
Labor Shortage, Rising Costs, Supply-Chain Hiccups Hit Manufacturers - Bloomberg

Dive Brief:

  • While CFOs, on the whole, remain optimistic about an economic rebound this year, they’re concerned about labor availability and accompanying cost pressures, according to a quarterly survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta.
  • Over 75% of CFOs included in the survey said their companies faced challenges in finding workers. More than half of that group also said worker shortage reduced their revenue—especially for small businesses. The survey panel includes 969 CFOs across the U.S.
  • “CFOs expect revenue and employment to rise notably through the rest of 2021,” Sonya Ravindranath Waddell, VP and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond said. “[But] over a third of firms anticipated worker shortages to reduce revenue potential in the year.”

Dive Insight:

As many companies struggle to find employees and meet renewed product demand, it’s unsurprising CFOs anticipate both cost and price increases, Waddell said.

About four out of five CFO respondents reported larger-than-normal cost increases at their firms, which they expect will last for several more months. They anticipate the bulk of these cost increases will be passed along to the consumer, translating into higher-priced services.

Despite labor concerns, CFOs are reporting higher optimism than last quarter, ranking their optimism at 74.9 on a scale of zero to 100, a 1.7 jump. They rated their optimism towards the overall U.S. economy at an average of 69 out of 100, a 1.3 increase over last quarter. 

For many CFOs, revenue has dipped below 2019 levels due to worker shortage, and in some cases, material shortages, Waddell told Fortune last week. Even so, spending is on the rise, which respondents chalked up to a reopening economy.

“Our calculations indicate that, if we extrapolate from the CFO survey results, the labor shortage has reduced revenues across the country by 2.1%,” Waddell added. “In 2019, we didn’t face [the] conundrum of nine million vacancies combined with nine million unemployed workers.”

Consumer prices have jumped 5.4% over the past year, a U.S. Department of Labor report from last week found; a Fortune report found that to be the largest 12-month inflation spike since the Great Recession in 2008. 

To reduce the need for labor amid the shortage, many companies will be “surviving with just some compressed margins for a while, or turning to automation,” Waddell said.