In today’s modern healthcare ecosystem, nurses and doctors get the final word on staffing. However, almost 60 percent of the healthcare workforce is actually composed of allied health professionals. Respiratory therapists run airway care for patients, and laboratory technologists manage the diagnostic tests that influence over 70 percent of clinical decisions. This section of healthcare is the essential operational component to patient care.
Because of this crucial role, staffing for allied health professions is often one of the first areas of staffing that health systems try to reduce to save funds. That’s unsustainable. With the aging workforce and changing demographics, this staffing imbalance is not sustainable.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expects allied health professions to grow by 15-20% by the year 2032. This is an incredible opportunity for forward-thinking health systems that have been looking at innovative staffing solutions to support their communities and employees.
Nursing has a pretty standardized baseline for licensing. Allied health includes a wide variety of specialized roles that are different enough to require unique staffing approaches. Successful staffing of allied health roles is dependent on knowing the different supply and demand factors for each role.
Organizations must improve retention first before addressing the issue of recruitment. Three causes of turnover of allied health professionals has pushed the turnover rate upward.
Nurses and Allied Health professionals encounter equally taxing patient workloads and similar stressors, yet Allied Health professionals remain excluded from hospital recognition initiatives. This perception of being part of an "invisible workforce" has the effect of rapidly increasing the incidence of burnout.
Many professions are beginning to utilize the gig economy and the ability to work from anywhere. Travel Allied Health roles, specifically imaging and respiratory therapy, offer flexible and better paying options than the traditional staff role. Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgery Centers are also beginning to lure employees away from acute hospital roles with no nights, weekends, and on call work.
While companies were quick to offer large bonuses to attract employees to combat staffing shortages, this led to a compressed wage structure where newer employees started making similar wages as longtime employees. This creates friction among coworkers and often leaves workers with the only option of changing companies in order to increase their base wages.
Recruitment for allied health roles has historically been done in a fragmented manner, with each clinical department (Radiology, Laboratory, etc.) recruiting for its own employees. The leadership in clinical departments is involved in hiring; however, the cost of recruiting separately from the other departments in the health system is too high.
Implementing a Shared Services Model
When organizations centralize allied health recruitment, they consolidate their advertising resources and establish a consistent approach to the candidate experience. There is also the added advantage of utilizing enterprise level recruitment technology. The added efficiency and lower costs benefit larger organizations that operate three or more health facilities.
Using internal float pools for nurses is an accepted concept, yet few organizations apply the same model to their allied health employees. Creating internal float pools for allied health professionals such as respiratory therapists, imaging technologists, and phlebotomists, among other disciplines, allows an organization to deploy allied health professionals between facilities to respond to the changing needs of the health care facilities based on fluctuating patient volumes. The resulting efficiency helps reduce employee burnout and cuts the overtime costs associated with covering the health facilities' allied health needs.
Investing in your current staff, especially when it relates to training, has retention benefits, and staffing benefits, particularly if you support your employees with training to learn and master additional skills, as in the case of radiologic technologists, which allows the organization to fulfill the high need for CT and MRI technologists, while providing the employees the opportunity for mobility within the organization, while instilling high loyalty to the organization.
When a facility has an 18% vacancy rate, simply placing a job post and hoping for the best is ineffective. Facilities must be more aggressive when considering the applicants who might consider a career in the facility.
Partnering with Allied Health Schools
Facilities shouldn't wait to hire their first allied health graduates. In fact, most facilities can easily work with the community and local colleges to develop relationships. After a few years, facilities should work with graduates by offering tuition reimbursement, top notch clinical rotation opportunities, and allow top talent to speak in classrooms.
Developing “Earn While You Learn” programs
Facilities have opportunities to create paid apprenticeships for various allied health roles. Sterile processing techs, phlebotomy, and pharmacy techs can learn in a supportive environment while receiving their certification with a living wage. Through the development of this apprenticeship model, facilities can create their own talent pool from their local communities.
Utilizing International Recruitment
For essential vacancies, such as Physical Therapists and Medical Technologists, international recruitment should be a consideration for most facilities. H-1B or EB-3 visas can support facilities in bringing highly qualified individuals from overseas. The visa process is more involved than typical hiring but is highly beneficial to the facility, as these employees remain highly loyal to the organization that hired them once onsite.
Using an actionable healthcare workforce plan starts with having good data. When considering recruitment of allied health workers, rather than basic headcount analysis, it is more important to break data down by specific staffing roles.
Tracking the Time-to-Fill (TTF) of allied health staffing roles on a broad basis is inefficient. A TTF must be tracked and assessed for every role individually. An assessment must also account for any expected variance of TTF based on specific roles within staffing (e.g. imaging techs versus therapists).
Calculate the Cost of Vacancy of theImaging Machines or Sterile Processing Departments when imaging machines or sterile processing departments go unstaffed and unable to support hospital operations. This information must be used to support your need to increase recruitment budgets or to justify sign on bonuses.
If your 90-day turnover rate is above industry average, or your turnover rate after one year is high, it is probably time to reconsider your hospital culture or salary competitiveness and stop over-assessing the efficacy of your current recruitment strategy.
Predictive analytics provide health systems the ability to forecast both retirement rates and staffing demand. This foresight helps talent acquisition teams focus on developing future talent pipelines instead of attempting to backfill unplanned departures.
The methods and energy used in physician and nurse staffing must be applied to allied health staffing. Allied health professionals are not support staff; they play a crucial role in patient outcomes, safety, and hospital financial success. Centralizing recruitment, developing innovative staffing techniques, and using data to make informed staffing decisions can build a durable and flexible allied health workforce.
Q: Which allied health roles are hardest to fill?
A: Due to rigorous educational bottlenecks and high clinical demand, respiratory therapists, MRI technologists, and nuclear medicine technologists consistently top the list of the hardest-to-fill allied health positions nationwide.
Q: Should we centralize allied health recruiting?
A: Yes. For health systems with three or more facilities, centralizing allied health recruitment under a unified Talent Acquisition team standardizes the candidate experience, improves overall fill rates, and significantly reduces reliance on premium agency spend.
Job boards don’t work for every Allied Health job search. Relode has redefined healthcare staffing by focusing on speed, accountability, and long-term results.
Combining innovative software and an expert network of thousands of healthcare recruiters, Relode offers you an advantage. Need to hire a single Respiratory Therapist or rapidly staff an entire diagnostic imaging department? We combine technology with an old-fashioned personal touch, ensuring that you will hire the best fit, both culturally and technically, for your healthcare organization.
Ready to build a stronger allied health workforce? Optimize your allied health staffing with Relode today.