Now it’s common knowledge that the healthcare industry is struggling with staffing shortages.
This issue has impacted its ability to meet the needs of patients across the country. It’s important to note that the causes of these shortages vary from function to function, and a nursing shortage, for instance, should not be treated the same as a similar drop among IT staff.
Here, I’ll explore the challenges faced by organizations when attempting to hire and retain expert healthcare IT staff. (And by “IT staff,” I’m referring to IT, informatics, and analytics professionals.)
If you were to ask most Americans with which occupations are health systems experiencing their greatest staffing challenges, they’d likely reply, “Healthcare professionals.”
Why would this group experience a labor shortage?
Because the crisis faced by healthcare systems is one that cuts across all of its disciplines, from nurse practitioners to physicians to physical therapists. However, for the past three years, that crisis has reached a critical juncture. Our health system is struggling to maintain patient-safety levels of quality healthcare workers due to a variety of factors:
While these issues are not unique to nursing staff, they don’t speak to the specific staffing problems that occur when organizations attempt to hire and retain healthcare IT workers.
When looking at the healthcare industry, it’s important to recognize IT workers for the critical role they play in patient care: They’re the behind-the-scenes players who ensure that clinicians have the tools they need to operate at top levels.
From optimizing workflows to minimizing administrative responsibilities to analyzing EHR data, their contributions form the foundation of world-class healthcare for each and every patient.
Hiring and retaining this kind of talent presents a different set of issues from those impacting other occupations across the healthcare industry. Although vendor partners might provide staffing recommendations to support their tools, mandated staffing levels is a rarity.
Therefore, every IT department starts with a staffing blank slate. And although most IT departments can look similar across 80% of their staffing structure, the organizations that do best at winning the staffing game know not only how to attract, but also how to design the remaining 20%.
The issues facing healthcare IT, informatics, and analytics departments have been affected by a completely different set of factors, including:
When determining IT staffing structures, department leaders look to their specific goals:
Their staffing needs will vary depending on their agenda.
With that said, let’s break down the three types of IT staffing structures:
Every organization faces its own unique set of hiring and retention challenges, including varying budgets and local talent supply.
Many organizations hire fully remote employees, which has expanded the candidate pool, but depending on salary budgets, some organizations have come to realize that they simply can’t compete with larger organizations that are doing the same thing.
In a perfect world, each organization would be able to hire the full-time staff they need, which would come in and perform the tasks they’ve been hired to complete with very little training. Then, when necessary, organizations would supplement their full-time employees with outside consultants or contractors for new projects operating on specific timeframes.
Hiring and development of full-time employees can be broken down into three categories, each of which has a unique strategy and set of challenges.
Each of the three categories listed above represents a different target market and requires a unique strategy not only for attracting and hiring, but also for onboarding and training.
What you do to attract and hire entry-level candidates is far different, for instance, than what you do to hire senior-level candidates. But many organizations employ the same strategy across the board.
Add to that, the markets for IT, analytics, and informatics have their own unique challenges, as noted above. As a result of these factors, a comprehensive talent-attraction strategy requires numerous different tactics. Unfortunately, most organizations use only a few antiquated tactics.
Once a strategy has been determined to recruit full-time staff, then another strategy — to find the right partner for consultants and contractors — can be put into place. In some instances, contractors will not be needed. In other cases, contractors may compose the majority of your team.
There are certainly going to be times when you’ll use contractors to augment your full-time staff. But according to Gartner, with skills and abilities turning over so frequently, it may be smarter to exclusively use contactors for certain positions.
The first step in all of this is recognizing that we’re in a new era of talent attraction. Most organizations ignore this fact, and struggle to attract the right employees as a result.
Make a decision: Will you train and develop? Or will you design a position that’ll attract the experienced person. You can no longer afford to be in between.