In 2022, 1.7 million people quit their healthcare jobs. It’s part of the mass exodus of workers known as The Great Resignation. By all accounts, the healthcare system has been widely affected by this workforce trend. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says healthcare organizations are losing on average about 3% of their labor force each month. When you add low retention rates to an increasing shortage of healthcare workers, you create a perfect storm for medical practices struggling to do their jobs in a volatile environment.
What is going on? How can healthcare organizations keep their staff happy and retain them for the long haul? We have four simple approaches that you can implement at your practice to help combat this trend and incentivize your skilled providers to stick around.
Why Is Your Medical Practice Staff Leaving?
To fix what may be broken, you should first look at the issues causing staff resignations. Healthcare is taxing for employees and valued providers are burning out and leaving the field. Losing skilled workers is at a crisis level; each experienced worker takes acquired knowledge about your practice that takes time to develop and replace.
Burnout is a huge issue in healthcare. The global pandemic exacerbated the crisis to where today, more than 50% of our country’s public healthcare workers say they are experiencing burnout symptoms. That number is higher for nurses and doctors (54%) and even worse for students and residents coming into the field (60%). One-third of nurses today say they’re planning to leave their jobs in the next year, citing burnout, job stress, and low pay as factors. A 2021 study reports one in three doctors, advanced practice professionals, and nurses plan on reducing their work hours in the coming years, while two in five nurses plan on leaving their current practice altogether.
An Advisory Board briefing from March 2022 cites common reasons why your medical staff may leave your practice:
- COVID-19
- More money
- Better opportunities
- Burnout or overwork
- Career growth
- Financial constraints at current employer
- Bored/wants intellectual stimulation
- Lack of appreciation/respect
- Moving or relocating
- Caregiver responsibilities
- Wants to leave the healthcare field
- Dislikes the increasing reliance on technology
Healthcare workers have borne the brunt of the COVID crisis and many are understandably cracking under the pressure. The real question for medical practices is—what can you do about it? Here are four things you can do right now to keep your medical practice staff happy.
#1 – Improve Your Workflow
Workflow redesign is a critical method of improving your business on all levels. Overcoming these challenges isn’t easy—a lack of time and money often frustrate small and midsize independent practices from reorganizing workflows and adopting new technologies to automate mundane tasks. Yet the studies show us that these two steps are critical to retaining your healthcare workforce.
The trick is to make changes in manageable increments and “eat the elephant one bite at a time.” Here are three areas you can tackle that may make substantial improvements to your practice workflow:
- Reassess your EHR workflow to improve efficiency
- Eliminate paper or analog processes, such as faxing
- Automate basic processes such as appointment scheduling and confirmations
Technology will help your practice. While you may roll your eyes and cite the dysfunction of your EHR workflows, labeling all technology as “bad” writes off the reality that these tools can make things easier for your staff. Your job is to find the right tools that fit what you need.
Many healthcare organizations already focus on patient satisfaction and service. However, it’s time that we also devote energy to improving some of the processes that cause unnecessary stress for staff members. This effort pays for itself—not only by improving how staff feel about their jobs but by improving the quality of interactions they have with patients.
#2 Create an Open Communication Environment
Knowledge workers want skin in the game. Having a say in practice decisions invests your workforce in the success of the organization. An open environment allows your current employees to talk about the struggles they’re facing and have a hand in solving them. Yet 86% of the U.S. workforce cite a lack of effective communication as the primary cause of workplace dysfunction.
Open communication increases:
- Engagement
- Productivity
- Retention
- Trust
Employees who feel more included in open workplace communications are five times more productive, and open communication is shown to facilitate the completion of tasks. In fact, 97% of workers say that better clarity from employers helps them complete their to-do lists more efficiently. Open communication can also minimize workplace silos that keep employees disconnected.
What can you do to improve communication at your practice?
- Consider communication training for your staff and doctors on conflict resolution and active listening
- Increase informal and formal engagement between staff and doctors with regular activities
- Start the day with brief motivational team huddles
- Encourage free-flowing dialogue without shutting it down
- Allow staff to voice their opinions
- Hold staff meetings to tackle big practice problems
- Seek feedback from staff and act on it
- Communicate more, not less—talk about the big issues affecting the business
- Set the baseline for open communication at orientation for new employees
- Make communication part of your mission
This advice on open communication must flow upward to your practice physicians and owners to create the kind of supportive environment that improves employee retention.
#3 Listen, Encourage, Acknowledge, and Develop (LEAD)
One strategy for improving workplace satisfaction is LEAD. It can serve as the baseline for your efforts to retain workers. LEAD stands for:
- Listen to your workforce by actively engaging and soliciting feedback
- Encourage your workforce by offering positivity and support
- Acknowledge the wins, both small and large
- Develop the skills of your workers and support their growth
Practice managers should establish an open-door policy to create better communication between upper management and staff. This means that every leadership door is open to employees and their feedback. Communication should include rewarding employees for good work and making an effort to support their professional growth and development. With 80% of the American workforce reporting that their employers don’t recognize their efforts, it’s clear that we should do more to recognize achievements and support team success.
#4 Support Flex Time
The demands of a busy practice make it harder to support our employees’ needs for more job flexibility and PTO. Encouraging “work martyrdom” leaves millions of unused vacation days on the table every year, only further driving workers to burnout. According to the data, employees are afraid to use their time off due to:
- Fear of returning to a pile of work
- Not having anyone else to do their tasks
- Inability to afford vacation time
- Fear of being seen as replaceable
- Desire to show complete dedication
We already know workers without paid sick leave take less time off. This leaves your practice vulnerable to competitors who offer PTO. We also know that since COVID, our employees demand a greater deal of flexibility in their scheduling. One healthcare executive quoted in Forbes says, “Today’s worker expects greater flexibility. They expect to have a greater degree of freedom over when they work.” For medical practices, these demands can present a conundrum, and you may wonder if it is possible to be flexible with a busy patient load.
First, plan your practice workflows around providing PTO. PTO combines vacation, personal days, and sick time into a single resource that employees can use at will. This offers your workforce a bit of flexibility in how they use this time. Today, almost all healthcare providers who work full-time receive vacation and sick time benefits, along with days off for holidays. However, more practices are moving to a PTO bank to give workers what they want—more flexibility on the job.
Practices can accommodate these benefits by setting rules around scheduling to help support both the office and patient schedules for staff members. When possible, telecommuting can help employees to continue working even when responsibilities keep them at home. Locum tenens can fill scheduling gaps. Even cross-training your workforce and using technology to improve workflows can support employees in their efforts to take time off without harming your practice.
If you’re offering vacation and sick time, a better question is: is your staff (including your doctors) using their PTO? Create a culture where your staff is encouraged to take care of themselves. Keep your medical practice team members happy by giving them time off, tracking it, and reaching out to employees that seem to feel guilty for using their PTO.