The ongoing healthcare skills shortage and technological disruption ranked among discussion topics at last week’s 17th annual Healthcare Staffing Summit conference in Las Vegas, produced by Staffing Industry Analysts. But the mood remained upbeat with the healthcare staffing market still in good shape.
“We heard lots of evidence of healthcare staffing firms with extremely high levels of orders and the challenge remains recruiting and finding the talent that they need,” SIA President Barry Asin said. “I returned from the event very optimistic about the outlook for the healthcare staffing industry.”
Healthcare temporary staffing is forecast to grow 4% this year; that’s better than the 2% forecast for temporary staffing as a whole, according to a report released in September by SIA. And that 4% healthcare staffing forecast —made in September — represents an upgrade from an earlier estimate of 3% growth made during April.
Growth aside, “one of the key takeaways was during Dr. Josh Luke’s keynote where we learned that hospitals and health systems are consolidating the number of vendors they purchase from and are choosing to work with companies that offer a variety of solutions,” said Amy Chang, SIA healthcare analyst. Healthcare staffing companies should be thinking about offering adjacent solutions that solve problems all along the talent acquisition spectrum for healthcare executives, Chang added.
But one cloud was the shortage of healthcare workers with the right skills.
“We’re in one of the worst shortages that we’ve ever seen,” Susan Salka, president and CEO of AMN Healthcare Services Inc., said during a keynote panel, adding the shortage will only get worse.
The physician shortage alone is expected to reach between 42,600 and 121,300 by 2030.
Tech Talk
While the skills shortage doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon, technology was also top of mind during the conference.
“It felt like everybody was talking about it, being more innovative and adding technology, looking at ways to evolve and transform,” said Ursula Williams, chief operating officer at SIA.
What is disruptive today will likely be table stakes in the near future.
In a CEO keynote panel, Sheldon Arora, CEO of LiquidAgents Healthcare, said that, ultimately, self-service platforms will be in place for healthcare staffing firms, connecting clinicians and clients online. The job of staffing firms will be to support, guide and help connect workers and client companies.
Vendors at the conference represented several tech tools. One example: Globus, which offers a virtual assistant to handle incoming job orders and match workers with jobs using artificial intelligence. The company already works with Dedicare, a large staffing firm in Norway, where Globus is also based.
The topic of vendor management systems also came up. Last year, 72% of travel nurse revenue went through a VMS/MSP, up from 69% in 2017.
Allied health also saw its share of revenue being run through a VMS/MSP rise; it was 58% in the first half of this year, up from 54% in the first half of last year.
Technology is also allowing for more transparency, and some talked of nurses doing more shopping around when it came to choosing a staffing firm.
There has also been a shift toward empowering candidates, said Matt Pierce, co-founder and president of Trusted Health, an online staffing platform for nurses. Pierce made the comment during a panel discussion on travel nursing. The travel nurse staffing market is poised to reach $5.8 billion in revenue in 2020, according to an estimate by SIA.
The next Healthcare Staffing Summit will take place Oct. 26 to Oct 28, 2020, in Houston.
