Tech Solutions For Healthcare HR

Addressing shortages, regulations, and efficiency

The U.S. is experiencing a healthcare staffing crisis. Shortages exist in every position and every care delivery environment. Home and long-term care providers, in particular, feel the squeeze. Evolving staffing regulations create even more difficulties for providers.

According to the American Health Care Association, 95% of nursing homes are experiencing difficulty hiring staff. Shortages have limited new admissions at half of surveyed facilities, and nearly three-quarters of managers worry that workforce challenges will force them to close. Yet, the U.S. population is aging, driving demand for eldercare.
 

As new staffing regulations take effect, healthcare HR managers must find a way to maximize human capital management. Errors and inefficiencies in HR processes hurt staff work-life balance, revenue, and regulatory compliance. Leveraging technology to develop streamlined and adaptable processes helps healthcare agencies meet staffing requirements and manage costs effectively.

Healthcare Staffing Regulations

Long-term care facilities are closely monitoring the status of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' proposed minimum nursing home staffing standards. These new rules would require nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid to meet specific nurse staffing levels. While designed to improve patient care, these mandates don’t include budget increases, putting further pressure on agencies to maintain appropriate staffing in a tough hiring environment.

In addition to federal regulations, each state has its own unique labor laws governing both the general workforce and healthcare workers. These regulations can cover everything from scheduling to wages. For example, the state of Washington requires facilities to offer certain healthcare workers at least eight consecutive hours of time off after working more than 12 consecutive hours. In New York, laws regulate the payment amounts for home healthcare workers based on where the patient lives.

Managing payroll and scheduling amid the patchwork of laws is labor-intensive. Manually handling these tasks creates more opportunities for scheduling and payroll errors. The best way to maintain compliance with ever-changing regulations is by automating as many steps as possible. Healthcare providers must embrace technology to schedule workers, manage payroll, and control costs.

Healthcare HR Tech as a Solution

Improving the caregiver scheduling process benefits everyone. Patients receive the care they need, caregivers have clarity and consistency, and financial managers and HR teams reduce costs and obtain more precise budget estimates.

Creating a schedule requires tracking employee availability, preferences and qualifications, as well as patient needs and requirements. Varying regulations, more nursing homes using staffing agencies and caregivers working in multiple facilities compound the complexity. Manually managing these variables is untenable. Digital scheduling solutions can address these challenges.

Set and Adhere to Required Staffing Levels

Using HR tech enables HR teams to set the standard Hours Per Patient Day (HPPD) for their facilities to determine how many nurses are needed, allowing HR to create schedules that maintain nurse shift requirements regardless of patient census. Establishing scheduling needs enables staffing expense forecasting for proactive financial management.

Manage Payroll

HR tech also enables advanced payroll automation, like the flexibility to set variable pay rates. A digital solution eliminates tedious calculations and errors to expedite payroll and ensure employees receive the correct wages. Designated cost controls prevent unbudgeted staffing costs. For example, an alert feature can let managers know when someone is approaching overtime hours, which helps prevent staff from being overworked and maintains payroll budgets. Additionally, digital timecards make it easy for staff to record their hours.

Handle Scheduling Changes

A digital solution manages day-to-day scheduling challenges and provides flexibility for staff. Instead of calling a scheduler, employees can jump online to report a scheduling conflict or request time off. This capability reduces the workload for HR staff, and the ease of use encourages advanced call-out reporting, providing more time to fill the gap. An automated system can alert managers and staff when a shift opens, allowing someone to pick it up easily.

Simplify HR Management

Embracing technology streamlines HR workflows for care providers and the HR team. Today's workers want digital options. An online portal empowers staff to manage their timecard, scheduling, onboarding, and ongoing paperwork, which makes their lives easier and creates a competitive hiring advantage. Care providers can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time with patients, while HR can focus on more strategic tasks.

Regulations are a reality of healthcare. Providers must constantly adapt processes to meet evolving statutes, and manually making changes is cumbersome and time-consuming. Technology provides flexible systems that seamlessly incorporate new requirements across the organization's operations.

With tight operating budgets and stringent staffing rules, healthcare organizations cannot afford staffing mistakes and inefficiencies. Healthcare HR tech streamlines and automates workflows to give teams control over human capital management, resulting in improved care, more consistent compliance and more effective cost management.

Author Bio

Peretz Rapoport, Empeon's VP of Product, has been a stalwart of the payroll and HR software industry for close to 15 years. Peretz's deep understanding of the healthcare industry has allowed him to guide the development of industry-leading software that meets the complex challenges of the healthcare industry head-on.