In this episode, Khaled Nasr, Chief Operating Officer at Medely, shares building a talent pool while attracting and retaining high-quality, contingent healthcare workers.
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Learn how to listen to The Hospital Finance Podcast® on your mobile device.Highlights of this episode include:
- The biggest challenges healthcare facilities face in staffing today
- How the demand for contingent healthcare workers changed in recent years
- Common misconceptions about using contingent healthcare workers
- What facilities can do to combat burnout and retain their top talent
- How technology is changing the way that facilities staff contingent workers
- What’s next for Medely in supporting healthcare facilities and professionals
Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast. We’re pleased to welcome Khaled Nasr. Khaled is the chief operating officer at Medely, a leading workforce management platform that helps healthcare facilities build successful workforce strategies that drive down costs and improve results. With a robust operations, strategy, and technology background, Khaled is pivotal in driving Medely’s operational excellence in scaling the company’s growth across the healthcare industry. Khaled holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from California State University, Northridge. He’s been instrumental in streamlining Medely’s processes, improving customer experiences, and expanding Medely’s reach in the competitive healthcare staffing market. Khaled’s leadership has helped Medely maintain its position as a trusted partner for healthcare leaders and providers, facilitating better access to flexible work opportunities and improving patient care.
In this episode, we’re discussing building a talent pool, attracting and retaining high-quality, contingent healthcare workers.
Welcome, and thank you for joining us, Khaled.
Khaled Nasr: Thank you for having me.
Kelly: Well, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, Khaled, what are the biggest challenges healthcare facilities face in staffing today?
Khaled: Yeah, great question. Healthcare facilities are really facing this perfect storm of staffing challenges that threaten patient care and operational efficiency, as well as the well-being of the clinicians. When you look at the US healthcare system, it’s really heading towards a severe workforce shortage where they estimate that there’s going to be a gap of up to 200,000 nurses by the year 2030. And this isn’t just a future problem. It’s really happening today. We at Medely speak to facilities across the country every day who are struggling to recruit and retain skilled nurses and other healthcare professionals, and this is making it harder to provide care for the patients.
So first, the demand for healthcare services is surging. We have this aging population with higher rates of chronic illness. But when you factor in the post-pandemic backlogs, that means that patient volumes are rising while staffing levels are declining. And it’s this imbalance that forces hospitals and clinics to do more with less, which only creates burnout and affects the quality of care.
And that’s really the second issue that we’re facing. It’s because of this increased workload, the staffing crisis is being compounded by unprecedented levels of burnout. If you look, nearly 30% of nurses are considering leaving the profession in the next year due to this high-stress environment, but also because of excessive workloads and just, in the end, emotional exhaustion. So, the pandemic accelerated this trend, but now it’s a systemic issue, and these nurses and healthcare professionals are just stretched too thin, and it just creates increased turnover, and then further workforce shortages.
But without meaningful changes, this cycle is going to keep going on and continuing, and it’s going to continue to put more pressure on the people who stay. So ultimately, to break this cycle, healthcare facilities need to start rethinking their traditional staffing models and embrace more flexible technology solutions, and this will be key to keeping up with the patient demand and reducing burnout for future generations.
Kelly: Oh, that makes a lot of sense, Khaled. So how has the demand for contingent healthcare workers changed in recent years?
Khaled: Yeah. I mean, the demand for contingent healthcare workers really just skyrocketed in recent years, especially after COVID, and is based off that increased demand that we just discussed. When you look at hospitals and clinics and other healthcare facilities across the country, they’re really struggling to maintain the proper staffing levels, so they have to turn to more flexible workforce strategies. But the flip side of that is that there’s been a fundamental shift in healthcare worker preferences. So, more healthcare professionals are moving away from traditional full-time roles in favor of flexibility and a better work-life balance.
We’ve seen studies that show 70% of workers now prefer not to engage in traditional work models, but instead focused on sourcing roles that allow them to choose their own schedules and locations and ultimately their work environments. And this has really contributed to the growth in companies like ours that provide healthcare staff more freedom and financial stability.
And by the way, this is really not just a healthcare phenomenon. We’re seeing this across all types of businesses in how people want to work. But it’s really solutions like us at Medely that make it easier for healthcare facilities to fill shifts quickly and more efficiently, because we’ve curated this network of over 300,000 healthcare professionals who are ready to work at a moment’s notice. So, this allows facilities to be much more flexible in how they staff their facilities and actually allows them to scale up and down according to current workload or census.
Kelly: Thank you for sharing that with us. So, what are some common misconceptions about using contingent healthcare workers?
Khaled: Yeah. Despite that growing reliance on contingent healthcare professionals, there’s a few misconceptions that continue to persist that prevent healthcare facilities from fully leveraging a truly flexible staffing solution. Oftentimes, facilities believe that contingent workers are less skilled or less committed. But in reality, these professionals are actively choosing to be more flexible in their work and their careers. So, it has nothing to do with being less skilled. And in fact, these professionals are actually much more diverse in their experiences because they’ve worked across multiple healthcare facilities, which makes them a lot more adaptable and more well-rounded than a traditional static workforce.
Also, there’s this idea that managing contingent staff is complicated and unreliable, but that comes from the fact that these healthcare facilities are using really old, traditional, and inefficient processes that are more manual as opposed to these new technology-driven solutions like at Medely, where we do a lot of the upfront legwork and streamline a lot of the processes that enables that facility to find and book healthcare professionals much quicker than in the past. So, you might say, “Hey, having a contingent worker doesn’t provide consistent quality of care,” but when you look at how facilities are finding and onboarding and hiring nurses today, only to have around 40% of them leave within the first 10 months, that doesn’t really provide a consistent quality of care.
So, a solution like Medely allows you to eliminate a lot of these reasons why those professionals are leaving in the first 10 months. And then we do all the things like sourcing, vetting, credentialing the healthcare professional in advance, and that creates a really curated, highly professional workforce that you can tap into at a moment’s notice. And ultimately, what that does is it frees up the time of the facility admin to focus more on patient care, which is what they really want to do, and then reduces manual staffing burdens to really simply a click of a button. Ultimately, in the end, contingent healthcare workers are critical and they’re part of the modern healthcare workforce. So, they just have to engage and utilize them the right way.
Kelly: Oh, it sounds like it, and that makes a lot of sense, the way you explained it. So, what can facilities do to combat burnout and retain their top talent?
Khaled: You really have to take a people-first approach. So, retention in healthcare is directly tied to how valued and supported these professionals feel. So, when a clinician expresses burnout or lack of recognition or even discusses their excessive workload, they’re more likely to leave. So, to keep talent engaged and committed, these facilities really need to prioritize workplace culture and communication, but also their staffing strategies.
We did a survey at Medely where 60% of the nurses say they desire more appreciation from their healthcare facilities. So, implementing things like meaningful gestures or verbal recognition, small bonuses, or even appreciation programs can make a really big impact on the professional’s decision to stay. It’s also important to be open with regards to communicating scheduling, staffing, and organizational changes because it helps build trust, and when a clinician feels heard and informed, they’re more likely engaged and less likely to feel disconnected or undervalued.
I think another one is just– not about being overworked, but it’s also about feeling underpaid for their efforts that they put in. So really making sure you have this proper compensation structure and incentives that help retain top talent, but also it helps demonstrate that you feel their contributions are truly valued. So, you could also incorporate things like career progression programs where you invest in training and certifications, mentorship programs to help staff grow professionally while staying engaged in their role. We’ve done this at Medely in our own workforce and it’s really been great.
But I think, lastly, the most important thing is really being very in tune to the staff when facilities are going through a really busy time. Start keeping an eye out for hints of burnout, but also incorporating things like contingent talent strategies, specific points in your employee’s schedule, and that’ll help distribute the work more effectively and create a much better environment for everybody, including the patient.
Kelly: Wow. Thank you for providing those tips for us. So how is technology changing the way that facilities staff contingent workers?
Khaled: Yeah. If you take a look around, technology is revolutionizing every single industry, and healthcare is no different. Healthcare has always been slower to adopt technology, I think. But after COVID and the pressures that they face today, healthcare facilities have opened up their minds to technology to relieve some of the pressures. And staffing has really been a big focus for them. Using technology like the ones we offer at Medely allows facilities to better staff, manage, and retain workers, and it makes the process more efficient, transparent, and data-driven.
Hospital onboarding processes are really slow and bureaucratic, and it’s a huge bottleneck to the time it takes to bring on the staff that’s needed. So, things like digital credentialing platforms like ours, it allows the facilities to verify licenses and certifications and background checks quickly, and then reduces the administrative burden and gets the workers on the floor faster. So, we enable facilities to instantly access a pool of those pre-vetted professionals, like I mentioned, but it also helps you feel those shifts at a much quicker and more efficient manner. So, this reduces things like scheduling gaps and prevents full-time staff from being overworked.
I think one of the biggest concerns for contingent workers is pay transparency. So, they go in and they perform the work, but they often don’t know when and where their payment is coming from, and what this does is it creates distrust. So, without using a technology– while using a technology-driven staffing solutions like ours, you can see clear, upfront compensation details before accepting a shift, and that really eliminates uncertainty.
I think, most importantly, though, instead of manually sourcing workers for every single shift, staffing platforms track high-performing professionals and automatically reengage them for future shifts. So, this not only improves consistency in patient care, but also enhances workforce stability, as facilities can develop a more reliable pool of trusted contingent workers that they can ultimately tap into.
Kelly: Wonderful. So, what’s next for Medely in supporting healthcare facilities and professionals?
Khaled: Yeah, great question. We’re always innovating and looking at ways to make it easier for healthcare facilities to staff efficiently while giving professionals more control over their careers. So, we’ve recently launched a comprehensive workforce solution called Talent Fusion, which provides a much more holistic view of a facility’s contingent labor by allowing them to manage and engage all their labor in a single system. And this includes their own workforce, the Medely Talent Marketplace, and lastly, our VMS system, which brings in third-party agencies to also assist in getting jobs filled. So now this facility can get a real-time view of their entire contingent labor in one place.
So, if you imagine, when a facility needs help, they can post out to their own internal workforce first, and then waterfall those jobs and those shifts to the broader Medely Talent Marketplace, and then ultimately to our VMS system, which allows those outside agencies to tap into those shifts. So, it creates real redundancy and ensures that you’ll always be staffed for the shifts you need. And a major benefit to this is with all of this taking place in a single system like Talent Fusion, facilities can now do things like manage the credentials of all the contingent labor, regardless of the source in a single system, but also it gives you the opportunity to get really insightful data on what’s happening across the facilities with all their contingent labor, with things like real-time rates across the markets, usage patterns at these facilities, and the types of cases that the labor was used for, and much, much more. So, what we’re aiming for, really, is to help healthcare facilities reduce their inefficiencies and cut costs, but ultimately, improve retention.
Kelly: Sounds amazing. Sounds like y’all are doing some great things.
Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Khaled, and for sharing your insights on building a talent pool, attracting and retaining high-quality contingent healthcare workers. We really appreciate all of your insights.
Khaled: Thank you for having me.
Kelly: And if a listener wants to learn more or contact you to discuss this topic further, how best can they do that?
Khaled: Yeah. If you go to medely.com, M-E-D-E-L-Y dot com, you can contact us from there and we’ll be more than happy to reach out and discuss with you.
Kelly: Wonderful. Thank you for providing that. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…
[music] This concludes today’s episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. For show notes and additional resources to help you protect and enhance revenue at your hospital, visit besler.com/podcasts. The Hospital Finance Podcast is a production of BESLER | SMART ABOUT REVENUE, TENACIOUS ABOUT RESULTS.
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