Severe staff shortage in the health systems of the USA has put the entire ecosystem of the medical industry in a dire mess. There have been no conclusive studies yet to support the quantified consequence of such an issue. But various reports from the federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid suggest that the effect of a medical labor shortage is more pronounced than expected in the earlier days of the pandemic. Medical systems are struggling to keep the hospital finances afloat and grappling with the spiral of losses for consecutive quarters.
Are there more consequences of medical labor shortage than meet the eye? What should the healthcare systems do to take care of the problem? Should you outsource medical billing to a revenue cycle management company for better results? This article will take you through the lesser discussed points of medical labor shortage and what you can do to combat the problems. Read on to know more.
Improving Patient Clinical Outcome
Patient clinical outcomes have taken a severe hit since the pandemic affected the health systems in the early days of 2020. But two extreme waves of Covid-19 later, health systems are now showing critical parameters on the overall clinical outcomes of the patient’s health. Many experts are linking these parameters to the shortage of competent healthcare staff. Some of the reports are given below:
- According to the recent report by CDC, infection rates at the healthcare organizations are again on a steep upward climb after being on the downward side for many years now.
- Researchers are of the opinion that these infection rates are mainly increasing due to the lack of infection control protocols.
- Due to the decreasing medical labor support at the organizations, the organizations are not being able to implement the standard protocols during their operational services.
- A vital area of change in healthcare programming due to Covid-19 is the delay in non-emergency procedures. However, statistical figures suggest that the procedures are not returning as expected even with lowering Covid-19 rates.
- On one side, patients are still not confident about trusting the Covid-19 safety protocols in the hospital systems. They are delaying many procedures further due to the fear of contraction of the deadly virus.
- On the other hand, health systems cannot provide elective care properly at the moment due to a severe decrease in the staff numbers since the pre-pandemic times.
- These situations are impacting patient clinical outcomes to a great extent, which is evident from the initial reports.
- In a statement given to Becker’s Healthcare, Patricia McGaffigan, RN, vice president of safety programs for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said, “That’s probably one of the first real pieces of data — from a large scale dataset — that we’ve seen that gives us some sense of direction of where we’ve been headed with the impact of patient outcomes as a result of the pandemic.”
Lags in Data Reporting
To study the real consequences of the staff shortage on the health systems, the organizations need to monitor real-time data with superior precision. Only then can the organizations track the real industry insights. However, that is often not possible since the collection and analysis of the data are lagging by at least two quarters.
- Data from the CMS are released and updated every quarter. Still, the data scientists feel it would be helpful if the organization accelerated the data release for the first two quarters of 2020.
- The only source of data for the analytical data firms is healthcare organizations who monitor their data on a regular basis.
- However, the quality of the data is questionable in the situation at the moment since the organizations are struggling financially.
- They have had to divert the majority of their resources to meet the organization’s daily needs, leaving them little room to improve their data analytics.
What health systems must improve?
- Looking into a better quality of care for the patients is one of the top jobs that the healthcare systems must see.
- Investing in a better quality of patient monitoring, especially given the currently limited visitation protocols, is another area where health systems should focus.
- According to the experts, prioritizing the contribution of nurses in the entire healthcare chain is another aspect that healthcare leaders must pay heed to.
- Given the shortage of medical staff, health systems could invest in better automation technologies for minimizing any inaccuracies in diagnosis.
- Forming a culture of reinforced patient communication could help monitor the preventative aspect of the patient’s health.
Why you should outsource medical billing to combat the issues:
- Medical organizations need to focus on the medical billing aspect to keep the revenue cycle moving. The increased administrative costs of maintaining a comprehensive in-house medical billing team further stress the health system’s finance.
- The hospital systems could divert their finances to invest in better quality staff rather than maintaining a huge billing team.
- Outsourced billing teams can provide you with excellent reimbursements without having to invest a large portion of your finances in them.
- To ensure a healthy revenue cycle management, you must recruit and maintain a team of expert professionals, invest in frequent staff training programs, and introduce automation technology to improve the process.
- When you outsource medical billing, you will get all the benefits of your own team without having to plan a complicated financing option.
- Additionally, you will ensure a steady quality of revenue cycle management with superior quality of customer support.
- Having an outsourced team for your medical billing teams will prove to have a tremendous positive benefit to your finance, which can help you to combat the medical labor shortage and improve the quality of clinical outcomes for patients.
We hope this blog helped you understand the lesser-known consequences of medical labor shortage and how outsourcing the medical billing team can help you. In case of any queries, please comment down below. Please subscribe to our blog for more such articles on healthcare news, billing, management, and technology. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for regular updates.