Meeting Demand: Strategies For Filling Healthcare Positions
America’s healthcare sector is facing a significant shortage of qualified professionals. For medical facilities, that makes filling job openings a bit difficult. It’s leading to increased workloads for staff members and soaring healthcare costs among other problems. It’s also detracting from the quality of care patients receive. To mitigate these problems, healthcare facilities need to develop solid strategies for drawing in medical professionals and filling their job openings. Consider the following solutions for better meeting a medical facility’s staffing needs.
Improved Recruitment Campaigns
For one, healthcare facilities need to develop improved recruitment campaigns to attract leading talent both in America and from abroad. In many cases, filling healthcare positions may require creating recruitment strategies that are tailored to the specific positions facilities need to fill. It may also entail working with colleges and universities, using social media, appearing at career fairs, and other methods to reach potential candidates.
Emphasizing the benefits and opportunities they offer medical professionals may also help healthcare facilities stand out in a crowd. Additionally, working with recruiting agencies can help facilities reach broader talent pools and streamline the hiring and onboarding processes. Recruiting agencies are well-versed in attracting qualified professionals for their clients, and they can help medical facilities reach and retain the right candidates.
Attractive Benefits and Compensation
Another key to attracting highly qualified medical professionals is offering more attractive compensation and benefits than the competition. Competitive salaries, insurance coverage, retirement plans, sign-on bonuses, and loan forgiveness programs may all come into play here. Though many medical professionals don’t enter the field for money alone, financial incentives can certainly help fill job openings.
Granted, many medical facilities in underserved areas and those that have been hit hardest by the current shortage may not be able to offer higher salaries or other financial bonuses. For them, offering flexible scheduling, EAPs, and other incentives may help bridge the gap. Highlighting the growing need for medical services in those areas and emphasizing how much of a difference they can make in people’s lives may be enough to attract some candidates.
Professional Development Programs
Offering professional development programs and opportunities can also help healthcare facilities attract and retain staff members. Many healthcare professionals struggle to advance their education and career while balancing the jobs they already have and other aspects of their lives. Because of that, building the opportunities they’re looking for into a facility’s incentives could be a major pull factor. Once they advance their careers, they may even choose to remain with the facility that gave them the opportunity.
Embrace Telehealth
Embracing telehealth can also aid in filling open healthcare positions. It gives medical professionals the option of working with a facility without necessarily having to relocate. Some offer telehealth services part time while also working in dedicated medical facilities. Others offer their services solely on a remote basis to help them enjoy a better work-life balance. Either way, bringing telehealth providers on board can help healthcare facilities fill their open positions without battling geographic restraints, local shortages, and certain other problems.
Locum Tenens
Locum tenens providers can go a long way toward addressing staffing shortages and filling job openings. They temporarily fill roles in healthcare facilities until they can find permanent staff members. Locum tenens are generally willing to relocate when a job opening arises as long as the position meets their expectations and skill levels. Though they’re not permanent solutions to medical facilities’ staffing needs, they can certainly be a boon in the short-term sense.
Filling Essential Positions in the Healthcare Industry
Though there’s a growing shortage of professionals in the healthcare industry, qualified candidates are out there. For medical facilities, finding those candidates and convincing them to come on board isn’t always easy. By using the strategies mentioned here, medical facilities can stand out in a crowd, draw in the candidates, and fill their job openings. In turn, they can continue to provide the quality of care their patients need.
