• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Web-Based Staffing Solution Provides Low Cost Solution to Healthcare Staffing Crisis

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

ALLENTOWN, Pa., July 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Online Staffing Solutions has developed a Web-based, low cost way for healthcare facilities to meet their staffing needs, with fee reductions ranging from fifty to seventy-five percent less than traditional staffing agencies.

According to Steve Kolbe, president and founder of Online Staffing Solutions, "Labor costs account for up to 70% of a hospital's or long-term care facility's costs. In 2003, the healthcare industry spent $17 billion paying staffing agencies for temporary staff. A 20% nationwide shortage of nurses and other healthcare professionals is at the heart of the problem."

Needless to say, the industry is searching for answers. Many facilities are trying to run away from agencies by creating large internal staffing departments.

"The problem is that staffing is a very tough job in the midst of a shortage and many facilities don't have the sales and marketing skills or the technology they need to do the job effectively," says Kolbe. "They end up simply moving the cost from paying an agency to paying their own staff, but they don't end up significantly reducing the cost of recruiting the people they need."

Kolbe started developing the service in 2002, brought it to the market in early 2004 and has signed up more than 20 facilities in 2005. The New York State Health Care Facilities Association District 3, an association of long-term care facilities in the Westchester County area, has endorsed the service and a number of their facilities are currently implementing the system.

"It took us almost a year," says Kolbe, "to fine-tune our service and demonstrate to the industry that we could effectively recruit the people they need. Now we have a number of success stories that we can point to that are making believers out of the skeptics."

Kolbe's service recruits, credentials and automates the scheduling of temporary staff for hospitals and nursing homes. He claims he can provide the service for 50% to 75% less than the markup that a traditional staffing agency charges. The staff can either be the employees of the facility or of Online Staffing Solutions; it's a matter of choice for the facility.

Because the service is Internet-based, there is no hardware or software to buy and the company does not charge any setup fees. Fees are based on providing qualified, professional staffing with a confirmation fee for every shift filled.

According to Paul Bellinger, vice president of the company, financial savings aren't the only benefit. "Nurses love our service because they can work when or where they want and totally control their schedule. Today they are being bombarded with phone calls from schedulers and agencies. We eliminate all those calls. They simply go on our website and select the shifts they want."

For professionals without a computer or for those wanting instant notification of a last minute shift, they can receive a text message on their cell phone and accept the shift on their phone.

The system helps to alleviate excessive overtime and potential burnout of a facility's full-time staff by building up a pool of people willing to take shifts at the facility. And because the facility approves all of the people eligible to accept shifts, it can improve the continuity of staff that is often lacking when agencies move people in and out of a facility.

"No one likes the current agency system," says Bellinger. "Not the nurses who are constantly called by numerous facilities and agencies...not the schedulers who feel like they have become telemarketers...and not the facilities' management who can't continue to bear the tremendous cost of agency rates of up to $60 per hour for a nurse."

The service also provides full-time staff as well. When facilities need full-time staff they look first to the pool of people that Online Staffing Solutions has brought them for their temporary needs because they are already well aware of their skills and work habits. Online Staffing Solutions charges the facility a small fee if it hires any of the people they have provided for a full-time position.

"We are receiving interest from as far away as Australia," says Kolbe. "Others want to adapt the system to other industries with staffing needs, like the legal profession. Career Builder gets 30,000 nurses a day going online looking for jobs. We are just taking it one step further by fully automating the process for the temporary staffing market."

You can learn more about this technology by going to Online Staffing Solutions' website at http://www.onlinestaffingsolutions.com/.

Online Staffing Solutions

CONTACT: Paul Bellinger, Online Staffing Solutions, +1-877-467-6669

Web site: http://www.onlinestaffingsolutions.com/

Source: PRNewswire

More News in this Category