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How Staffency's Streamlining Process Supported Gundersen Health System's Rapid Growth by Saving Time and Reducing Costs
Overview
Gundersen Health System faced a common challenge in the healthcare industry - they were struggling to fill open nursing and coding positions in a period of rapid organizational expansion. Working with multiple recruiting agencies came with several challenges:
Inconsistent communication
Inefficient recruitment processes
Low-quality hires
High spend
Solution
Implement customized MSP solution:
- Strengthen Staffing Agency
- Communication
- Streamline Recruitment Cycle
- Rate Consulting
Outcome
Successful implementation led to:
- Saved Time
- Increased Quality Hires
- Increased Cost Savings
About Gundersen Health
Gundersen Health System is where caring meets excellence through a comprehensive health network of wholly owned services and regional partners. It's where nationally recognized quality meets dedicated, compassionate professionals, caring for patients in all stages of life.
Gundersen is:
- A physician-led, not-for profit healthcare system
- Repeatedly named among the top 50 hospitals in the nation (top 1%!) Located throughout Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota caring for patients in 19 counties
- A regional referral center with regional hospitals Designated Western Academic Campus for the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health
- Environmentally responsible (the first health system to achieve energy independence in 2014!
The Challenge
Because Gundersen Health was experiencing significant growth, the need to work with multiple staffing agencies was essential to fill current skills gaps and avert labor shortages. Gundersen Health was seeking to fill nursing and coding positions - positions healthcare organizations often experience skills gaps. Working with several agencies created a disconnect in communication, resulting in confusion and worsened staffing shortages. In many cases, Gundersen experienced staff arriving unexpectedly, or worse, not arriving at all. Such consequences of miscommunication and disorganization are costly to healthcare organizations.
In Gundersen's case, the recruitment cycle, compliance and onboarding, as well as expenditures suffered immensely due to inconsistent communication and low quality hires. Gundersen was in need of a steady and reliable recruiting model that attracted a pipeline of the industry's best nurses and coders without the hassle of overseeing multiple agencies on top of managing day-to-day tasks and staffing.
The Solution
Improve Recruitment
Improve compliance and onboarding
Improve cost saving
Recruitment
Staffency's MSP services implemented a plan in conjunction with Gundersen to oversee and manage all communication with every agency working for Gundersen Health. This allowed Gundersen Health to retain all staffing agencies in order to continue utilizing valuable staffing resources, while Staffency became the main point of contact. Staffency oversaw all aspects of contingent labor recruitment under the parameters established by Gundersen Health to help quickly and efficiently recruit top-tier talent.
Onboarding
Staffency's involvement in the recruitment cycle extended to overseeing candidate screening, compliance tracking, and onboarding to alleviate unnecessary tasks for HR and hiring managers. For Gundersen Health, compliance and onboarding proved to be a tedious, time consuming task. With miscommunication and fragmentation from several staffing agencies, proper recruitment was time- consuming, inefficient, and leading to low quality hires. By taking control of communication and management of compliance and onboarding, Staffency ensured quality talent was deployed to Gundersen Health.
Prior to partnering with Staffency, keeping track of all the compliance documentation was a challenge. Having to constantly ask several agencies for the compliance documentation was always a struggle. Staffency took care of gathering the pieces we needed from a customized list that I provided to them and then emailed directly to me in one email instead of getting several documents, it has been so nice", Melissa H.
Cost Savings
In addition to saving time in the recruitment process with Staffecny, Gundersen benefited from reduced costs through the use of contingency staff. By avoiding normal employment expenditures, such as benefits, sick leave or vacation time, Gundersen was able to benefit on cost savings. Additionally, recruitment costs increase exponentially the longer the vacancy. By quickly filling rates (99% fill rate), Gundersen was able to avoid ongoing recruitment costs. Furthermore, as a full-service MSP firm, Staffency was able to guide Gundersen on consistent billing rates specific to positions based on current market rates. This helped Gundersen explore greater cost savings by avoiding overpaying clinicians due to low market rate visibility.
Growth and Impact
Saved Time
No longer was Gundersen's hiring team plagued with endless emails, phone calls, and miscommunication associated with managing several agencies. With Staffency strengthening and overseeing staffing agency communication, the Gundersen HR Team had greater time to focus their efforts on recruiting their permanent staff and scaling their organization.
Melissa H., Recruitment Services, stated, "Before Staffency, I would reach out to many agencies with the same communication. Then I would have to follow back up with all of them again to let them know if we filled the position. Lots of my time was spent on communicating. With Staffency, I have one person to communicate all our needs to!" Since resources were freed up, Gundersen was able to expand services to focus on hiring permanent staff and in-house recruiting."
With Staffency's agency oversight, as well as our own resources, such as connections with 200+ agencies, 10,000 job boards, and accessible talent pools, Staffency was able to quickly place a dedicated Coding Manager and a team of top contingent coders to tackle specific specialties and date ranges requested by Gundersen. Quick placements further allowed for saved time on behalf of Gundersen to focus and tackle greater organizational tasks.
Growth and Impact
Saved Costs
Gundersen was able to experience tangible costs savings. With Staffency's consulting services and market rate tools, Staffency suggested that based on market rates, Gundersen should reduce per hour coding rates from $75 to $65, allowing Gundersen to reign in on unnecessary spend. Additionally, Gundersen saved on onboarding, compliance, and training costs associated with new hires. Lastly, saved time and quick recruitment allowed for greater cost- savings potential by further saving resources on personnel conducting time-consuming tasks.
