As we move deeper into the digital age and face a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, Chicago hospitals are bracing for new and intensifying staffing challenges in 2025. Here's a look at the top 5 issues, informed by government data and industry trends, and how DirectShifts can help
The U.S. healthcare system is facing a staffing crisis of unprecedented scale. A recent report from McKinsey & Company predicts a shortage of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses (RNs) by 2025, while the demand for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) is expected to surge by 40% in the same period. The Bureau of Labor Statistics paints an equally bleak picture for medical technicians, forecasting a 5% decline in the workforce by 2031. This translates to a potential loss of over 29,000 technicians in the coming years.
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Workforce management is top of mind for healthcare executives as COVID-19, historical inflation, and critical health worker shortages have pushed hospitals and health systems to their operational and financial brink. With total healthcare labor expenses jumping 20.8% from 2019 to 2022 and "...median operating margins for hospitals fell from 5.6% to -1.4% between December 2021 and March 2022", health system executives are looking for innovative ways to curb labor costs.
Healthcare worker burnout has become an increasingly significant issue throughout the healthcare industry. Burnout among healthcare workers affects patient care and can cause decreased job satisfaction and performance, leading to high clinician turnover, exacerbating staffing shortages, and threatening staff and patient safety. Healthcare administrators continuously seek innovative solutions to this challenge.
Ensuring your healthcare facility is staffed with highly professional, quality-driven individuals can be daunting. Working with locum tenens providers has proven to be a beneficial solution for many hospitals and health systems; however, recent trends suggest that healthcare executives would like to reduce their reliance on these premium providers.
Reducing Reliance on Travel Nurses through Community-Focused Recruitment and Marketing. The current state of the healthcare labor market puts hospitals and health systems in a precarious situation. On the one hand, health systems and hospitals want to reduce their reliance on travel nursing labor in favor of permanent hires.
The nursing shortage has only increased during the COVID-19 pandemic further increasing the need for a healthcare staffing partner to serve as a resource to fill vacancies as soon as possible. To ensure that facilities do not fall further behind in nurse staffing and have access to top talent when it is most needed, it is important to recognize that not all healthcare partners are the same and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Worrying that your hospital's nurse staffing is a cause for concern is a natural reaction. Indeed, the issue of low nurse retention rates has been at the forefront of much discussion within healthcare organizations. Nurse turnover can be a significant challenge, and one way to address it is by offering flexibility to nurses.
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