Healthcare organizations are no strangers to staffing challenges and labor shortages.
Over the last few years, thousands of healthcare workers have exited the medical profession, driving up hospitals’ labor costs by more than $42.5 billion between 2021 and 2023 to a total of $839 billion. Today, labor costs account for roughly 60% of the average hospital’s expenses, according to figures published by the American Hospital Association. While some of these labor costs are attributable to the surge in temporary staffing at the height of the pandemic, the pressure to do more with less has never been greater.
“Our staff really are the most important asset, but it’s more challenging than ever to uphold staffing standards,” said Bailey Benoit, MHSA, manager of healthcare strategy and operations at Plante Moran. “We’ve seen an exodus of staff providing bedside care. We have a limited pool of clinical staff to pull from, and a lot of nurses are choosing to either leave inpatient nursing or move to another organization.”
To stay profitable, healthcare organizations must embrace a smarter staffing approach. The right labor productivity benchmarking tools, used in conjunction with strategies that improve midlevel manager engagement, can help with this while boosting staff morale.
