Flexible W-2 workforces: Healthcare’s solution to traveler agencies and wage inflation

Many health systems are experiencing the challenges of travel nurse agencies, 1099 staffing agency apps, and Vendor Management Systems (VMS) or Managed Service Providers (MSP). Rather than alleviating the long-term staffing crisis, they seem to be compelling health systems to artificially cap patient care levels, agitating the workforce to collective bargaining and increasing wages to unsustainable levels for systems’ care demands.

The old, traditional staffing travel nurse VMS/MSP models and the new Silicon Valley 1099 “gig” apps are similar in that they solve only one problem: filling a shift no matter the cost, without considering your budget, full-time employees, or distinct recruitment and retention needs.

It can be argued that they are instead driving up wage inflation, siphoning staff from health systems and increasing systems’ reliance on outside actors. Their reliance on 1099 contractors also introduces health systems to unnecessary legal and liability risks. Furthermore, it is important to consider the long-term, expensive contract structures required, which could be avoided through the rebalanced hiring of full-time staff with on-demand, flexible labor models.

The bottom line is: They aren’t building sustainable workforce models for your system.

Some of your colleagues might argue that you can hire your way out of the problem, but the reality is that you cannot afford to do so, and there aren’t enough full-time people, no matter how strong your brand or how much you pay.

Others will recommend staying with your legacy staffing partner because they are going on demand, creating an internal resource pool tech platform, or planning to provide marketplace technology. The issue is that their business models are aligned with high-profit travel and investor expectations, meaning apparent promises could potentially turn out to be empty.

So, what do you do? There are other healthcare systems who have cracked the DaVinci staffing code. It is called a W-2 workforce marketplace model.

The W-2 workforce marketplace model will redefine staffing for your hospital system, radically reduce costs and help you recruit and retain talent in a new way. It is a three-phase evolution approach with a W-2 (not 1099) workforce marketplace technology partner:

Phase one: Get off travel.

Health systems can save millions, reduce travel almost immediately and stabilize their workforce models by creating their own, local marketplace. It is important to partner with a W-2 workforce marketplace platform like ShiftMed.com and develop incentives to reduce labor costs. Then, you can create a white-labeled marketplace brand to attract an external, local pool and finally deploy this pool methodically, unit by unit, to remove travel labor.

Phase two: Bring your employees into the on-demand marketplace for an internal agency.

By bringing internal resource pools and employees into the marketplace, health systems can retain staff through flexibility, as well as recruit full-time caregivers from new, external, on-demand pools. A workforce technology backbone partner can connect all your labor resources under one umbrella, with dashboards to rebalance the mix of full-time versus outside labor in real time. A partner is also instrumental in creating a targeted recruitment and retention plan from external marketplace pools.

Phase three: Move beyond wages to the Maslow hierarchy of incentives.

Study after study demonstrates that health system candidates want more than money in most cases; they want tailored incentives that are targeted to their needs. To address these needs, in lieu of wage changes, organizations can add on transportation benefits like UberHealth for free rides to work; plug in education technology tools into the marketplace to encourage retention; and leverage predictive analytics tied to the marketplace to anticipate skill mix needs and caregiver needs such as childcare.

In summary, the revolutionary benefits of utilizing a W-2 workforce technology partner in your healthcare facility include ending the travel dependence, reducing costs in the millions and moving toward self-sufficiency in recruiting and retaining caregivers.

ShiftMed can work as your W-2 workforce marketplace technology partner. It is white-labeled, so caregivers feel that they are taking flexible shifts directly from your brand.

ShiftMed can help your hospital system strike the right balance of full-time and flexible labor to create a sustainable, engaging and cost-effective workforce model. The partnership doesn’t win when your hospital system loses staff or has to pay more. Rather, it is a partnership focused on recruiting, retaining, reducing costs and rebalancing how your workforce is deployed through W-2 workforce marketplace technology.

Learn more and access resources at Shiftmed.com.

Aamer Mumtaz, MBA, MPH, is senior vice president of growth operations at ShiftMed. Aamer is a healthcare operations and growth expert with over 20 years of broad-based experience as a transformational leader. In addition to advising complex healthcare systems and payers, Aamer has served as a successful executive in multiple startup, digital health labor marketplaces.

Learn more at www.shiftmed.com.