In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Advantis Medical Staffing is featured as one of the Top Healthcare Staffing Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile!
How do you know if working with a travel nursing agency is right for your practice? Simple. Start with two questions: Can they fill your travel nursing job requirements quicker than you can on your own? If so, are you confident the clinicians who supplement your staff nurses will be personable, professional, and prepared from the start of their first shift? The answer to both should be a resounding “yes” before you partner with a travel nurse staffing agency.
Next, you must select the healthcare staffing company to solve your short-term frontline worker needs. The company you pick will impact the quality of your results. Choose an organization that understands the landscape, has a track record of success, and is invested in your happiness.
There’s a fine balance to filling nurse positions during staffing shortages. It’s crucial to maintain adequate staffing levels of registered nurses with the specialties required by your patient population. You need nurses with verified nursing licenses, who show up in the right color scrubs, and who are familiar with your charting system.
Additionally, it would be great if they fit your healthcare system’s culture, maintain a relentless calm, and make it look easy. If that sounds like a lot, you’ve been paying attention. Placing healthcare professionals in travel nursing assignments blends technology and humanity in just the right measure when it’s done right.
The three key metrics to consider are efficiency, effectiveness, and economic impact. Seamless continuity of services requires prompt responsiveness and clear best practices. Customer loyalty depends upon positive experiences. And any staffing solution must be financially sound. We’ll review them in order:
- Professional Process
- There’s a Lot on the Line
- Time is Money
Professional Process
It’s in everyone’s interest to maintain efficient workflows throughout the patient care cycle. You’re able to help more patients when everyone steps up to execute their role well and shifts go smoothly. Those in your care don’t endure excessive wait times and shouldn’t notice any service disruption. Because, if your patients aren’t happy, you will most certainly hear about it. So will everyone on your patients’ social channels. You’ll get more done, faster and better, with a travel nurse company that offers simple and comprehensive processes from recruitment to credentialling and through to extending contracts.
Thus, temporary staff must be proven pros with documented experience, specialties, and certifications. Errors are costly but can be avoided with industry-specific systems that are quick, include redundant verification, and are attuned to catching and correcting oversights and mistakes. Healthcare staffing companies have vast candidate pools and many offer portals in which clinicians can assemble all necessary information neatly in one place. Highly effective travel nurse companies institute processes that verify all steps are completed properly and that clarify any vague, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
So, a big advantage to this solution is skipping a mass recruitment effort. You save time and money when your recruiting contact has taken care of that before your first call. Excellent candidates are waiting to go to work for you. A healthcare staffing agency can connect you and save a world of time and hassle.
There’s A Lot On The Line
Lives, careers, and money are on the line, to be clear. The nature of their business means healthcare facilities don’t have the same margin of error that less critical industries enjoy. Maintaining the outstanding quality of care is non-negotiable. This is first because caring for others is at the heart of what you do. Additionally, your medical practice depends on a strong, positive reputation to grow within the community. After all, you gain referrals based on a track record of being good at what you do.
Being good at what they do and readily available is why travel nurses’ pay rates are higher than staff nurses’ salaries. They step into urgent need scenarios and adapt on-the-spot to keep the waters calm and the team moving forward. It’s hard to quantify the value of this flexibility. But, considering the fast-paced, ever-changing healthcare landscape they operate, it makes sense that clinicians who choose a travel nursing career have a rare ability to keep a facility operating effectively.
Travel nursing agencies are no different. They’ve developed processes and methodologies to ensure speedy applications, placements, credentialling, and extensions. Entire teams have built workflows to ensure a positive travel staffing experience. These trained professionals go unseen and unnoticed by the public but they’re the engine behind effective recruiting practices.
Unless you have in-house resources with the skillsets and bandwidth to recruit, qualify, and onboard temporary staff at a moment’s notice, you’ll benefit from a relationship with a capable healthcare staffing company. After all, the goal of this entire model is to facilitate wellness and recovery–not to have to recover from delivering incorrect or inadequate healthcare.
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Time Is Money
How confident are you that your HR team can come through with great candidates and have them ready to work in less than a week? Probably not very confident at all. Data and automation run the world. If your tech and your team are not future-proofed, you’re history. Speed and accuracy cannot be overrated when you’re clamoring for the best candidate in a pool of high-demand talent. That’s why, in many cases, you can’t afford to not work with a healthcare staffing agency. The question becomes which one is best for your needs.
Look to the past to plan your future. If you want fast placements and qualified candidates, see which agencies have a track record of success. If you’re starting from scratch, a look at Google and Facebook reviews is an excellent launching point. Not only can you see the ratings, but you can note trends in feedback. You’ll quickly spot the staffing companies that prioritize positive experiences and the purely transactional ones.
You Can’t Automate Compassion
You also can’t measure it. But expert recruiters are the heart of the best travel staffing agencies. Once you establish a relationship with an agency that has a culture of compassion, you’ll notice those recruiting professionals develop a knack for matching more than skills. Your dedicated recruiting team will solve your staffing needs with travel nurses and allied workers who share your core values as well as capably execute their skills. It’s in these long-term relationships that the magic happens.
Not only will your recruiters and care team get to know your distinct preferences, but you can gain loyalty from clinicians who renew repeatedly. You know you’ve reached this sought-after state of staffing when the need to address a nursing shortage fast triggers a phone call, not a panic attack.
A Model Of Success
It’s going to happen. You’ll find yourself short-staffed or unprepared for a surge in illness or the need for other healthcare services. The time to ask yourself whether your medical practice should work with a travel nursing agency is now before you need one. Make sure they can meet your needs and delight you, your staff, and your customers. Once you know where to go for your healthcare staffing needs, you’ll have the peace of mind you need to know your staffing model is the picture of health.