3 Biggest Healthcare IT Staffing Challenges and Solutions to Overcome 

It’s no secret that staffing isn’t easy, let alone staffing an IT department in the Healthcare industry. How do you handle a shortage in professionals? What will you do when your best IT staff member retires? In this blog post, we will go over three of the challenges that are proving to be hurdles in Healthcare IT staffing and how they can be answered.

The Need to Do “More with Less”

With limited supply, healthcare is facing an impending crisis unless providers figure out how to "do more with less." They are feeling the pressure to find innovative ways to cut costs and bring more efficiency to healthcare delivery. But how do you do that? We have a few suggestions:

• Find some quiet time to think. Grab yourself a cup of coffee at your favorite coffee house and piece together your game plan. Start slow: try to only take 15 minutes at a time at first, then scale up from there. Don’t get be sidetracked by Facebook or other distractions. It’s harder than you think.
• Communicate efficiently. Consider having shorter meetings. The average meeting is 30 minutes, and just think about it: how often do you tend to go off topic in those meetings? Shorter meetings are proven to be just as, if not more effective. Try having 15- or maybe even 10-minute conversations to get topics across.
• Learn how to say “No.” In order to get more done, you actually have to do less things but—very importantly—the most important things.
• Ask yourself, “What am I accomplishing?” Many professionals confuse activity with results. Being busy does not necessarily mean you have achieved results.

"Today, activity has become the anesthesia for leaders who wonder if they’re really accomplishing anything worthwhile or important. So when you are doing those thinking sessions, focus on that question: What am I accomplishing?" - Mark Sanborn, President, Sanborn and Associates

Baby Boomers are Reaching Retirement Age

Many managers dread the thought of losing some of their most valued employees to retirement. This difficult question can't help but be asked: Who will replace them when they leave? More importantly, will younger workers have the knowledge and skills to take their place?

When you lose a member of your team, you're not losing just their productivity. You're losing their knowledge, their initiatives, and their skills--many of which some firms have come to rely on. Fortunately, this problem (and many other fears of the Baby Boomer retirement crisis) can be resolved efficiently.

• Allow open collaboration between experienced employees and those just beginning to learn. Have a culture where colleagues can freely share knowledge with one another and support one another.
• Not all Baby Boomers will retire at 65. While some of them still will, as life expectancy lengthens, so do careers.
• If your VIPs are looking to retire, consider allowing them to work part-time, or on a contract basis. You will be able to keep your valuable resource (in this case, the employee), and they will have the free-time they crave.
• Create a knowledge base. Provide access to written materials, shared documents or an intranet site where people can update information and share best practices.

Do you have members of your team that are approaching age 65? Learn more about what to expect in our blog post, Baby Boomer Retirement: Is Your IT Department Ready?

Shortage of Experienced IT Professionals

Talent gaps are hampering employers’ ability to fill open jobs, and this is stifling growth for many organizations. Healthcare has been hit especially hard, as it lagged behind other industries in investment and innovation in information technology. Now they are scrambling to catch up, and hospitals and health systems are facing a tight supply of skilled IT managers and executives.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for medical informatics technicians is expected to significantly outpace job growth in many other industries, and prospects for skilled healthcare IT workers could be very promising for candidates with solid computer software training.

With this in mind, the availability of outsourcing should be seriously considered. Three-quarters of the healthcare executives who responded to a recent HIMSS survey said they had outsourced at least some of their IT. The top areas for outsourcing were clinical application support, project management, and system design and implementation.

Some facilities have managed this shortage by hiring new graduates with strong “soft” skills: graduates who show a desire for continued learning and growth in a position. To attract these candidates, the facility offers industry and vendor-specific certifications so they can continue to grow. 

Unlike most IT healthcare staffing firms, V-Soft has the resources to bring amazing value that can be an option to contract-to-hire or team member additions. More than recruiting, it’s the brass ring of healthcare staffing resources exclusively through V-Soft. Learn more about our IT staffing services here.