Workforce management is key for every healthcare organization for better financial outcomes hence it is important for you to focus on your workforce management. It is the continuous process to optimize productivity with effective management of employees and personnel. In short “Workforce management is having the right people possessing right skills in the right place at the right time” and includes all the activities that are concerned with increasing capacities and prolificity in an organization. You can have a glimpse of various activities in the following brief.
Activities included in workforce management
Forecasting
Planning capacity of how many employees or staff would be needed to complete a particular task or operation during a particular time.
Scheduling
It involves planning which personnel will complete what task in what time frame.
Time Tracking
This is essential to know how much time is devoted to completing the work and to track deviations.
Budgeting
It helps in estimating precise fund deployment on employees and staff.
Performance Management
It helps in monitoring and evaluating employee performance.
Analytics
This ensures regular tracking of performance in comparison with objectives.
Now, you have a better understanding of various activities included in workforce management which are having better financial outcomes. Now let’s understand the importance of workforce management in healthcare.
Why workforce management is essential in healthcare?
In today’s world, workforce management has become an integral part of organizations and therefore healthcare institutions are also reaping benefits from it. Since healthcare is a service industry and is mainly operated by people and the service they provide, it becomes vital to have proper personnel management in place.
Efficient forecasting of personnel and scheduling of operations can help other core functions like budgeting and analytics. Increased demand for physicians and industry competitiveness makes it more compelling to have proper management and retention of staff.
Also, a shortage of capable and efficient staff has been observed due to increasing requirements in healthcare that lead to building pressure to maintain and recruit qualified medical and non-medical staff. If this shortage issue is not handled properly, it may also lead to an increase in labor costs. The rising labor cost with already rising operating costs is seen as a threat to organizational management.
Controlling and reducing such staffing expenses has therefore become a top priority for the healthcare industry. And so, workforce management has been gaining importance to manage such issues by creating a sustainable strategy in forecasting staff requirements, recruiting efficient staff, provide required training with industry trends, scheduling work according to their skills, evaluating their performance on a timely basis, performing analysis and reporting deviations in performance to keep track on objectives set.
After looking at essentials, let’s understand improvement in financial outcomes.
How can workforce management improve financial performance?
Reduction in cost-
Workforce management can significantly help in cost reduction because of the efficient utilization of resources at hand.
The most important and expensive resource in healthcare is the staff or employees because they are the ones disposing of service and estimating their requirements for operations and assigning them to work according to matching with their skills can help to control labor costs.
Controlling expenses-
Workforce management helps in employee retention which reduces the attrition rate and therefore company experiences a reduction in recruiting expenses for vacant positions.
Also, if the present workforce is managed effectively and tasks are assigned per scheduling and availability of staff, then it helps in cutting down expenses for fresh recruiting.
Management of cash flows-
With efficient budgeting, the management of present cash flows becomes a relatively easier task. Appropriate cash flows in the organization can help in overcoming uncertainties and aid in managing daily operations smoothly.
Now let’s understand various benefits.
Benefits derived by workforce management in healthcare
Staff engagement
Workforce management lets the staff know in advance their involvement needed for different operations which in turn facilitates smooth functioning as they can also manage their time effectively as per need of the task assigned.
Organizations are making the best use of technology here for scheduling work and letting employees know their requirements in the firm.
Centralized management
Through workforce management, all the scheduling, forecasting, and budgeting data are stored in a centralized format where everyone can have access to it and leverage it according to the situation and task requirement.
Increased productivity
Personnel in the organization know they are being actively tracked on their performance, so they try to give better results every time a task is assigned to them which helps the organization to stay in the direction to achieve overall objectives.
Transparency
Communications and assignment of tasks are open to everyone in the organizational structure which enables better transparency and helps in increasing employee morale.
Finally, you have a better understanding of workforce management for better financial outcomes in the healthcare industry to stay afloat. Especially, Workforce management is gaining traction during the Covid-19 pandemic as every healthcare practice is facing declining revenues and shortages of healthcare workers. If you are looking to optimize your revenue, then you can get in touch with us. We are a medical billing company having HIPAA compliant experts to handle all billing processes and ensure proper and quick reimbursement.
