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The Innovation Gap in Healthcare Staffing 💻 Part 3 - Why Healthcare Staffing Companies Struggle with Building Technology   In healthcare, staffing companies play a crucial role in ensuring that hospitals have the right personnel when they need it most. Yet, despite their importance, many healthcare staffing firms struggle to integrate technology effectively into their operations. This challenge often stems from conflicting priorities between service and technology. In other areas of staffing outside of healthcare, it’s virtually unheard of for an agency to own a VMS, let alone run their own MSP. This specialization of roles has removed the conflict of interest allowing all parties to do what they do best whether it be tech, service, or personnel focused. A decade ago, the large healthcare staffing companies realized that if they could control the job order, they could create an advantage over their competitors by prioritizing their staff over the staff provided by other agencies. This approach was extremely profitable for agencies, but left hospitals to seek solutions that reduce reliance on agency staff. Staffing companies weren’t interested in creating solutions that reduced the hospital’s dependency on their staff, so they continued to focus their technology spend on innovations that enabled an increased dependency on the travel nurse while neglected the once neutral hospital-facing technologies that they had recently acquired. Staffing companies found themselves trying to serve too many customers- the nurse, the hospital, third party agency in their MSP vendor panel, and finally the shareholder. As service-focused businesses, agencies were able to fill some of the gaps with people, but the hospital now demands more transparency, reporting, and overall engagement with the technology that can be lacking in current tools. As a result, new and focused technologies like Simpliant and others are stepping in to provide VMS, ATS, HRIS, and other tools that are no longer tied to agency, or MSP. This departure from the current norm in healthcare is once again creating a healthy and competitive environment that benefits hospital, agency, and nurse.

Simpliant’s talent management platform brings flexibility and control, freeing you from the confines of traditional systems. We offer an all-in-one platform that’s easy to navigate and tailored for healthcare providers and suppliers. 💡 Key Benefits: - Streamlined Processes: From ATS to CRM and staff management—all in one spot. - Internal Mobility: Easily shift between using permanent and contingent staff to fill vacancies. - Compliance & Margin Transparency: Stay on top of industry regulations without breaking a sweat. - Access Anywhere: Say goodbye to being tied down to your desk. Manage your talent pool on-the-go. - Simplified Onboarding & Sourcing: Get your talent ready faster and more efficiently. In essence, choosing us isn't just a tech upgrade—it’s a smarter way to manage your talent while keeping adaptability and compliance at the forefront. #HealthcareInnovation #TalentManagement #Simpliant

👩⚕️ The nursing shortage is a critical issue. Using technology, we tackle this challenge head-on, improving management and recruitment. Simpliant provides a seamless way to fill gaps faster and more efficiently, ensuring healthcare facilities remain equipped and responsive. Empower your workforce strategy with the right tools. #HealthcareInnovation #NursingShortageSolutions #TechInHealthcare

The Innovation Gap in Healthcare Staffing 👩💻 Part 2 - Pushing the Boundaries We recently addressed why the vendor-led MSP has competing priorities when trying to manage the contingent labor workflow for a hospital customer. There are also economic factors in play that can lead to internal conflict dealing with the challenges associated with disrupting your core staffing business. Additionally, we’re in a sector where pioneering solutions can be bogged down with outdated practices. Meanwhile, the urgency for skilled professionals continues to escalate, yet traditional staffing methods struggle to keep pace. Technology has played a pivotal role in staffing for over two decades now, but we’re seeing the demand higher than it’s ever been before. By leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence, healthcare facilities can streamline their hiring efforts. This approach not only increases efficiency but also improves candidate quality. The obsession with getting the best nurse to the hospital as quickly as possible has driven the best agencies to the top but isn’t without challenges when it comes to developing technology to keep up with those processes. If the agency focuses only on developing technology to serve the nurse, it’s hard to also commit resources to building technology that serves the hospital. Outside of healthcare, the agency is laser focused on creating processes and using a mix of in house and third-party technology to serve the worker, but leaves the development of the VMS technology to non-competing technology companies. With different companies focusing on each serving the technology needs of a unique customer, both supply and demand side each get a better experience that usually means better reporting, a modern UX, and seamless integrations with other frequently used tools in the workflow. Until healthcare realizes the technology and workflow benefits to using a neutral vs. vendor-led VMS, we’ll continue to see a gap in technology developed specifically for healthcare and for the rest of the staffing industry.  

The Innovation Gap in Healthcare Staffing It’s hard having competing priorities when developing software, especially when disrupting one’s core business is exactly what needs to happen to push the technology forward and provide more efficient workflows, better user experience, and integrations with other technologies. For the last decade or so, this problem of competing priorities has been the trend in healthcare staffing. As a result, many hospitals and MSPs have expressed frustration as healthcare-specific technologies fell behind. There are a few reasons for this, but as we’ve discussed previously, the focus of a staffing agency is (and should be) putting the best candidates to work at the best price in a timely fashion.   Part 1- The Vendor-Led MSP The vendor-led MSP is a perfectly acceptable and common approach in both clinical and non-clinical staffing. After all, why not trust your best staffing partner who intimately understands internal processes, has relationships with key client stakeholders, and knows what type of candidate is the best fit for the client? If both parties are pushing each other, this symbiotic relationship can prove to be mutually beneficial for years or even decades, and there are countless examples of very successful programs run exactly this way.   Unfortunately, we often witness both parties become complacent, and the status quo becomes acceptable. There can be many causes, but if good candidates are being provided in a timely fashion at fair rates, who’s to blame? The hospital can fulfill the mission to provide care to patients, and if the Vendor/MSP is fulfilling the above-mentioned agency requirement to place competent workers.   So what’s the problem, one might ask? The client is getting what they need, the vendor partner is happy, shareholders are happy, and nurses are getting placed in jobs where they’re a great fit. The pandemic accelerated and exposed the flaws in this model, showing hospitals that they were too heavily reliant on the long-standing supplier partners, and when everyone needs something that is in finite supply already, something must break. Instead of being able to use technology to lean into current or retired nursing staff, local candidates, and more versatile float models, hospitals were forced to bring on additional suppliers and sometimes even MSPs, all at unsustainable bill rates. The VMS technologies that were in place failed the MSP and hospital client not because of the obvious surprise of the pandemic, but because creating technology that reduced the number of travel nurses was not in the best interest of the vendor or their MSP.   Fortunately, we’re seeing true progress and innovation by both the independent and neutral VMS technologies, as well as the vendor-owned VMS platforms. Next week, we’ll dive a bit deeper into the causes of the innovation gaps, but more importantly, how those gaps are being addressed through both technology and service. 

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