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Healthcare Staffing, Recruiting a Major Problem for Hospitals

Each Breath Counts, LLC - September 19, 2021

The issues with respect to recruiting skilled and experienced healthcare staff in hospitals have been staggering and increasing profoundly. This concerning fact for the hospitals and clinics, not just stands true from a historical perspective, in terms of continuing shortage of healthcare professionals, but also holds true, more so in current times, in lieu of employee dissatisfaction levels being increased due to the prevailing pandemic.

According to a recent survey of healthcare executives, conducted by JP Morgan, to address the recruitment problems in hospitals, it was analyzed that 92% of hospitals said that they were quite perturbed about finding candidates with the right skill sets.

The dearth of finding and recruiting the right talent pool also carries with it a devastating after effect of patient care delivery being impacted heavily, and leading to serious patient conditions.

There are numerous combined challenges linked to healthcare staffing, right from the recruitment process till placement of the candidates in hospitals, thus posing severe problems coming in the way of bridging the huge gap between the number of healthcare workers and hospitals being able to seek productive physicians, practitioners and clinicians.

There is lack of qualified and well-trained applicants, unconscious bias from the hospital looking for candidates, legal risks, complicated documentation, time-consuming job screenings, historically high turnover, shortage of available talent; the list of shortcomings to find, recruit and retain adequate healthcare staff seems not to end in the near future.

75% of staff, surveyed by reliable sources, have considered leaving their profession. Replacing physicians is becoming all the more expensive, potentially costing a hospital between $500,000 to $1 million. The cost of replacing a bedside nurse is about $52,100, resulting in the average hospital losing $4.4 million to $6.9 million a year.

The situation of recruiting healthcare staff continues to remain critical and becoming an increasing matter of concern, which needs to be addressed with a sense of urgency by staffing firms and healthcare organizations.