Healthcare

The 44th National Association for Health Care Recruitment (NAHCR) IMAGE Conferencetook place in Scottsdale, Arizona this past week. Expanding upon the previous year’s conference learnings, successful healthcare recruiters will need to adopt marketing tactics, leverage new technologies, and understand their potential candidate audiences in order to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Several years ago, my colleague Vu T. Do, PreCheck’s Vice President of Compliance, discussed a growing concern for employers as our investigators noticed an uptake in the detection and reporting of diploma mills. Unfortunately, this is not the only trend with which healthcare employers should be concerned.

Vermont’s recreational marijuana law, Act 86, goes into effect on July 1, 2018. While employers still broadly retain their same rights to test for marijuana, prohibit it’s use in the workplace, and discipline based on a marijuana-positive drug test, Act 86 brings about nuances to workplace drug testing in the state that employers should be aware of.

In nursing, competence and compassion go hand in hand, and reflection can help to cultivate both. As healthcare providers strive to create care experiences centered on the people whose health is in the balance, training nurses to reflect on their experiences is one way to help them learn to optimally care for other people.

Few industries have as vital a need for innovation as healthcare. Spending on healthcare is more than one-sixth of the annual U.S. gross domestic product, and medical errors account for 400,000 deaths per year.

Healthcare providers play a critical role in today’s society – providing care for hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. As an industry, they have seen firsthand the devastating impact of drug use and abuse today. But with higher than average rates of use and addiction in their own employer population, how are employers in healthcare able to manage their own workforce? 

A lot of organizations boast about having a people-centered culture, but how does that apply in the healthcare sector, where outcomes can literally mean life or death, and workers are under constant strain to deliver top-quality care?

At its core, a people-centered culture is one that puts the human element at the top of its strategic priorities — the patients they serve, of course, but also those internally and externally who get the job done of serving those vulnerable populations. It promotes open dialogue, constant feedback, mentorship and transparency.

Healthcare employees often experience personal satisfaction from their work — helping people is a great motivator. But sustaining happiness over time can be a challenge, and the high-pressure environment can put employees at risk for stress and burnout.

Last week, the 22nd Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) Compliance Institute was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over 3,000 healthcare compliance professionals gathered at the single most comprehensive healthcare compliance conference. Besides learning about the latest developments and priorities from regulators, the Compliance Institute offers networking opportunities and educational tracks to help attendees strengthen their organization’s compliance program.

Healthcare organizations are facing a wide variety of challenges as the healthcare landscape evolves. As a result, healthcare HR is approaching a crossroads: With the fast-moving changes in how care is provided and paid for, healthcare HR leaders should consider restructuring the work they do to help their organizations succeed.