Hospitals and healthcare facilities face the daily challenges of retaining their nursing staff and maintaining safe nurse-to-patient ratios. With aging populations and growing burnout, the nurse staffing shortage is only worsening. As recruiting new clinicians gets more difficult amid these challenges, can per diem and PRN nurses offer some relief for healthcare facilities?
Being alone in the PRN experience can be difficult, but using Nursa for facility staffing solutions allows healthcare centers to access a broader talent pool of nurses in the healthcare marketplace and offers other unique benefits.
In this guide, learn how leaning on per diem and PRN nurses as a pool for long-term recruitment can offer facilities benefits such as flexibility, lower costs, and new staff with diverse experiences and skills.
Why It’s Harder Than Ever to Find and Hire Clinicians
According to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Nursing Workforce Dashboard, 11 percent of RNs in the nursing workforce have already retired or are considering retiring within two years, and 9 percent within three to five years.
In addition, Health Affairs published a nursing workforce analysis, which showed that the supply of registered nurses from 2020 to 2021 decreased by 100,000. An important group leaving the workforce was under 35 years old—most of whom worked in hospitals. This drop in nursing personnel is the largest seen in the past four decades.
These factors and the following contribute to the difficulties that healthcare facilities face in recruiting and retaining nursing staff.
Healthcare Professional Burnout
Long shifts, heavy workloads, facing life-or-death situations, and having to cover mandatory overtime due to nurse shortages put healthcare workers among the top employees experiencing burnout.
According to the American Medical Association, nurses have the highest reported burnout rates in healthcare, at 56 percent.
A good work-life balance is one of the most significant aspects that affect employee satisfaction and directly impact nurse retention. However, facilities without sufficient nurse staff often try to cover all the shifts with the nurses they have, increasing the likelihood of burnout and turnover. In fact, overworking nurses can increase the risk of burnout for healthcare workers by 2.2 to 2.9 times.
Moreover, nurse staffing challenges are expected to continue over the following decade. According to HRSA’s health workforce analysis, the projected shortage of full-time registered nurses will be 78,610 in 2025 and 63,720 in 2032.
These numbers show that nurses will continue to be in great demand in the US in the foreseeable future. Contracting PRN nurses is the most efficient way to overcome the difficulties of being short-staffed and maintaining an appropriate number of nurses at all times.
High Nurse Turnover/Recruitment Costs
The average time it takes a hospital or healthcare center to recruit nursing staff is 86 days, and for an experienced RN, the number ranges from 73 to 94 days. In other words, a healthcare center needs almost three months to recruit an experienced nurse.
According to Becker’s Hospital CFO, the cost of staff RN turnover for healthcare facilities ranges from $45,100 to $67,500.
Here are some facts that can help facilities see the bigger picture:
- The national RN vacancy rate is 9.9 percent.
- The national RN turnover rate is 18.4 percent on average.
- Almost 18 percent of new nurses resign from their first jobs in the first year.
A survey commissioned by Nursa highlighted the recent growing nursing costs:
“75% of the healthcare Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and 69% of all executives said nursing costs put significant pressure on their bottom line or have been the top driver of margin pressures in the past two to three years.”
CFOs surveyed by Nursa reported they have had to increase nurses’ starting wages by 20 percent in the past two years. This data shows the significant challenges that hospitals and healthcare centers face when recruiting and maintaining their nurse staff.
The Solution for Growing Staffing Challenges
While there are flexible staffing options available for short-term shift needs, how do you reliably find new, qualified nurses to join your facility’s team of clinicians?
Per diem staffing solutions like Nursa can be used as an external float pool that facilities can use to discover new nurses that might be right fit for their nursing staff. Under traditional recruiting models, there’s a dozen steps and added costs between finding a qualified applicant and onboarding them at a facility. With Nursa, you can cut that process and its associated costs significantly.
Clinicians who use Nursa already have a valid background check and the necessary qualifications to provide care in your facility today—all you need is to learn if there’s a good clinician/facility culture fit. With no minimum shift requirements, facilities can easily scale up or down the number of clinicians they try out at their facility.
Benefits of Using Nursa for Your Nurse Recruiting Strategy
Nursa is a healthcare platform that connects facilities and clinicians in one place. It provides facilities the opportunity to find skilled nurses to fill their shifts more efficiently and effectively than traditional hiring methods. In addition, facilities using Nursa can manage the fluctuating need for nurses during periods of low census and surges in demand for healthcare services.
Nursa does more than help solve short-term shift needs. Learn how facilities can use the platform as a strategy to find, meet, and hire clinicians as full-time in-house staff nurses.
Access a Broad Talent Pool of Qualified Clinicians
Three months is the average time to hire a skilled registered nurse. Therefore, healthcare facilities are in a tight situation regarding talent acquisition.
Facilities often deal with a bureaucratic system of contacting staffing agencies, waiting for long periods, and paying high fees. However, facilities using Nursa as a partner in recruitment have a different experience.
With Nursa, facilities don’t have to worry about finding qualified, highly skilled nurses to cover shifts. Nursa conducts background checks and confirms credentials so facilities can focus on providing quality care with the skilled PRN nurses this healthcare platform offers.
No Added Costs to Your Existing Recruitment Strategy
Facilities often undergo time-consuming and lengthy recruitment processes, reading resumes, conducting interviews, and training new nurses. Nevertheless, by partnering with Nursa, facilities don’t need to worry about any of those steps.
Nursa’s healthcare platform is not just for short-term staffing needs but also for finding new internal staff. Plus, facilities only have to pay for the PRN shifts worked.
Try Out New Clinicians at Your Facility Before Hiring
Working with PRN nurses can help facilities learn about and evaluate a nurse’s skills, work ethic, and experience before hiring them in-house. Therefore, facilities lower the risk of investing a lot in bringing someone new to their nurse staff only to see them leave within the first year.
Furthermore, facilities working with Nursa and contracting independent nurses don’t need to pay costs associated with permanent staff, such as employee benefits or taxes.
No Hire-Away Fees
Nursa helps facilities keep their recruitment costs low. Unlike some agencies and staffing platforms, Nursa doesn’t charge hire-away fees when a facility decides to hire a PRN clinician for an in-house staff position.
Local, Hands-On Support
Nursa doesn’t leave facilities alone when searching for the right nurse. With this healthcare platform, facilities have direct access to a local Strategic Partnership Manager who resides in their market area and focuses on providing hands-on live support to drive the facility’s growth and share insights with its team.
How to Get Started
Nursa is an evolution of the tired recruitment process. It allows facilities to avoid high costs, long wait times, high turnover rates, and exorbitant hire-away fees. Furthermore, facilities gain a partner that helps them throughout the process.
Working with Nursa is the best way to maintain safe nurse-to-patient ratios without the costs associated with employing new nurses.
Learn more about how Nursa works with facilities and discover how both hospitals and long-term care facilities can get the most from Nursa.
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