Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/135744
The Benefits Package The Rising Tides Forces of change in the healthcare industry can be calmed by outsourced workforce solutions. By Susan Salka The bottom line for the healthcare industry is not the same as other industries. For our industry, the bottom line is always patient care. And that's why healthcare often is a late adopter of new technology, new organizational modeling, and new business practices. When something new comes along that boosts cost-effectiveness and profitability, other industries might readily adopt while healthcare hangs back, first weighing the complex variables that impact the safety and care of patients. So it's not surprising that the healthcare industry has moved cautiously in outsourcing workforce solutions. Today, though, a seismic shift is hitting healthcare. Rapid changes are a response to healthcare reform, clinician shortages, burgeoning numbers of seniors who need more healthcare, ever-stricter quality mandates, an electronic health records revolution, pressure to restrict costs, new and ever-moresophisticated treatments and devices, and a general escalation Rapid changes are a response to healthcare reform, burgeoning numbers of seniors who need more care, ever-stricter quality mandates, an electronic health records revolution, pressure to restrict costs, new, sophisticated devices, and a general escalation in the complexity of patient care. in the complexity of achieving excellence in patient care. Each one of these areas of change comes with its own set of Then, in the mid 2000s, we began to hear loud and clear from workforce challenges. our clients that they wanted more from us. It was great that we In this era of historic transformation, healthcare systems must were the leader in supplying nurses, but now they had shortages maintain their focus on patient care, so they are naturally and labor needs in all types of clinical areas. They were looking seeking help for workforce challenges. Partnerships with not only for nurses but physicians and allied professionals, workforce solutions experts provide valuable support so too. Back then, you were either a nurse staffing company or hospitals and other medical facilities can concentrate on patient a physician staffing company or an allied staffing company; care. The evolution of AMN Healthcare over the last two nobody did it all. We were the first organization to make that decades has helped lead change in the industry as we developed step, and we did it through acquisition. In 2005, we acquired workforce solutions to match the transformation of healthcare Merritt Hawkins, Staff Care, and MedTravelers. This gave us the staffing needs. nation's largest physician staffing and permanent placement capacity. It was a major step in our strategy to become a holistic When I started with the company 23 years ago, we were a partner with our clients by providing them a broad and deep single-service, single-product company—we provided travel spectrum of staffing services. Lo and behold, our competitors nurses to hospitals across the country. There were only a handful tried to follow suit, as so often happens when you've got a great of companies that did what we did at the time. Throughout the idea. 1990s, as the industry was growing, we grew to be the largest travel nurse company through organic growth and acquisitions. The next major evolution in our industry and our company came We were able to bring value to our clients by moving nurses during the last five years with the emergence of Management around when and where they were needed the most, while Services Programs (MSP) and Recruitment Process Outsourcing always ensuring quality. (RPO). We started to see more openness and desire from our [56] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | MAY 2013