3 Tips to maximize technology for improved staffing

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Home-based care organizations are navigating staffing shortages brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, an aging population, wage inflation pressures, and accelerated retirements in the nursing workforce.

In addition to these industry challenges, clinicians are asked to do more non-clinical tasks while experiencing less work-life balance — making it difficult to recruit and retain top talent.

The good news is the right technology can enhance your staffing strategy, recruit talent with efficient workflows, and empower teams to work at the top of their licenses. Organizations that adopt the digital tools with their staff in mind will optimize operations and foster a more positive environment for clinicians and the important work they do.

Here are three tips to improve staffing by maximizing technology:

Tip #1: Communicate seamlessly to increase staff (and patient) satisfaction

Nurse burnout in home-based care is a very real problem commonly caused by the time-consuming effort of coordinating home visits, documentation, connecting with colleagues, and after-hours work to finish charting and prepare for the next day.

With real-time communication between home-based care providers and those they serve, staff efficiency and satisfaction can increase — while also reducing the likelihood of errors, adverse events or hospitalization.

Tip #2: Do more with less to retain top talent

To have an educated, compassionate care team that provides the best possible care experience, organizations must attract top talent. But with inefficient workflows, dated paper-based processes, unsecure communication, and reliance on manual methods of collaboration, staff burnout will continue and retention challenges will go unaddressed.

Here are ways the right technology can lighten the workload for staff:

• Route patient-initiated communication to the right person or team and escalate if needed.
• Tag chats for retention of critical clinical information.
• Easily locate documentation and audit history.
• Capture data electronically with the ability to integrate into the EHR.
• Access all patient-related information.
• Digitize and automate administrative workflows.
• Know patient status with pre-visit communication and assessments.

Tip #3: Use efficient workflows and digital forms as recruitment tools

It’s clear that technology can improve everyday workflows for staff, but how can it help you recruit top talent? Show applicants how your optimized workflows will give them the work-life balance they’re looking for in an employer.

Here are a few ways to use your digital tools to recruit staff:

• Showcase technology screenshots during the interview process to give applicants a view of what to expect in their daily tasks.
• Use technology to obtain standard forms during the onboarding process.
• Deliver training and answer questions electronically.
• Implement digital tools at the very beginning to get new hires passionate about your technology stack.

Technology can do so much more in home-based care than improve the patient experience. Schedule a demo today to learn how CitusHealth was built to help clinicians do more with less, ultimately helping your organization be the first choice for top talent.