Staffing – Doing More with Less

At AHRA’s 2024 annual meeting, we had an opportunity to chat with several leaders about the challenges that they were facing. Quite unanimously and quickly (and without pause or deep thought), they all replied with a single word: staffing. “I can’t get enough good people!” Clearly, they were getting by, but they were also feeling the pain of not having enough staff to meet patient demand. Read on to learn about their specific challenges and the solution that can help alleviate their pain points.

Not Enough Qualified Candidates

In most conversations, leaders were looking for qualified technologists. The barriers were rooted in three areas: 1) getting enough applicants to evaluate, 2) of those applicants, not enough were qualified, and 3) losing existing technologists. On the last point, many shared that when technologists left, it was for a wage increase, rather than job dissatisfaction reasons. Some leaders shared that their hands were tied in their ability to match wages because the increase was too far above – or their organization had not yet caught up with – established market rates.

A Warm Body is Not Enough

Whenever the topic of insufficient qualifications was mentioned, most leaders were quick to clarify that this went beyond technical competency. It was very important that they found someone who was a personality fit for the existing team and the organization. One individual shared that this led to difficult conversations with the recruiting team that would counter with statements like, “Well, you said you desperately needed someone. So, after a long search, here they are!” Although a candidate may look good on paper, if they are not a personality fit – for all the wrong reasons (e.g., demonstrating signs of a difficulty personality, communication style, or work ethic) –, hiring them may do more harm than good because it would put the existing staff’s morale at risk.

Maximizing Efficient Productivity

Achieving efficient staff productivity is about maximizing output without sacrificing other aspects, such as job satisfaction. With a business operations platform, like Foundations™, practice admins and other leaders can monitor productivity in real time or review historical trends through analytics dashboards. But finding opportunities to improve productivity isn’t limited to staff output; opportunities can be found by monitoring idle times and utilization of devices & rooms, as well as timestamps for each step of the patient appointment journey. These are just a few KPIs that can be uncovered through Foundations™. This visibility into performance enables leaders and individual contributors to make incremental and sweeping improvements to the efficiency of business operations.

The Bottom Line

There’s no doubt that staffing is a hot topic. While there are still certainly challenges with staff scheduling, the more imperative issue now is hiring enough staff to fill open positions. Furthermore, not only do candidates need to be technically competent, but they also need to fit in with the team without negatively impacting morale. A business operations platform like Foundations™ provides the performance visibility that leaders need to optimize their business performance. And while Foundations™ may not eliminate the need to hire more staff, it may present the realization that less headcount was needed than originally anticipated – thus, doing more with less staff (and without introducing burnout).

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