The Impact of Hiring Contingent Healthcare Workers: Exploring the Benefits and More

Every day in healthcare can seem like a struggle for survival — keeping your patients healthy while keeping your employees from completely burning out. All this, on top of maintaining a financially viable operation. 

It can seem like an impossible situation, without the right help.

A healthcare MSP can help, by supplying contingent healthcare workers and managing their daily administration. We’ll review the many benefits of hiring contingent workers into your operations, and show you how an MSP can allow you to maximize those benefits.

Table of Contents

• Why Is Contingent Staffing Important in Healthcare?
• 10 Benefits of Hiring Contingent Workers in Healthcare
• How Can Healthcare Organizations Maximize the Benefits of Hiring Contingent Healthcare Workers?
• Harness the Benefits of Hiring Contingent Healthcare Staff With the Help of Trusted Managed Services

Why Is Contingent Staffing Important in Healthcare?

With increasing staffing challenges in healthcare — especially among physician and nursing positions — contingent staffing is more important than ever.

A healthcare facility is a delicate ecosystem, and staffing constraints can have a real-time impact on the well-being of its patients.

Contingent staffing allows healthcare organizations to quickly react to vacant positions, fluctuating demand, and other unforeseen obstacles, disasters, or problems. 

A healthcare MSP can manage your entire contingent healthcare workforce. Working with Trusted Managed Services can help reduce the complexity of keeping your operations fully staffed.

10 Benefits of Hiring Contingent Workers in Healthcare

#1: Cost Savings

Aside from the various operational benefits of hiring contingent workers, the simplified costs of using a staffing vendor can result in significant savings compared to permanent staff.

While it is true that contingent staffing is typically billed at a higher hourly rate than permanent staff, it is an all-inclusive cost. 

Permanent staff involve additional costs like health benefits, paid time off, and payroll taxes. These additional costs can result in a fully loaded cost equivalent to double the employee’s hourly wage.

Studies show that, when it comes to registered nurses, the cost of contingent staff may save 33% vs. the total cost of permanent staff.

There is also a revenue-protecting benefit to utilizing contingent workers. A staffing strategy involving contingent workers helps keep the facility at full staff. This can maximize the total patient capacity and the resultant revenue contribution.

#2: Reduced Turnover and Burnout Rates

Staff turnover is a natural part of a healthcare facility, but it does bring an operational cost and an added strain on staff and patients since:

• It costs an average of 6 to 9 months of an employee’s salary to replace them. For more specialized roles, this figure is even higher. These recruiting and training costs take a big bite out of the facility’s finances.
• Reduced staffing levels due to turnover add to the stress existing staff experiences. Understaffing and high workload further contribute to employee burnout, risking even more turnover.
• Patients may experience delays in care and diagnosis, lower quality of care, and staff errors. This situation is already at a breaking point across the nation’s healthcare system.

When working with an MSP to staff a portion of your operations with contingent workers, you gain the flexibility to prevent and react to burnout and turnover because:

• Contingent staff can be rotated out to avoid burnout.
• Your MSP can quickly fill vacancies created by any paid time off your permanent employees take.
• If an employee leaves your organization, your MSP can fill the vacancy quickly while you either work to fill it permanently or decide to expand your usage of contingent healthcare workers.

#3: Maintaining Staffing Requirements

When it comes to nurse-to-patient ratios, fluctuations in patient volume bring fluctuations in the amount of nursing staff required. When these ratios are tested, both patient care and hospital financial performance can suffer.

Especially since COVID-19, an increasing number of states have implemented staffing requirements such as minimum nurse-to-patient ratios:

• California has had a comprehensive law in effect since 2004. The law lists 25 different care scenarios and assigns a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio for each.
• Massachusetts has a law that focuses on ratios for ICUs specifically.
• In New York, there are a variety of nurse-to-patient minimum requirements depending on the care unit. This minimum ranges from 1:2 for the ICU, to 1:6 for well-baby nursery units.
• Oregon has enacted a new law, beginning in June 2024, for certain nurse-to-patient ratios to be adopted for the day shift, night shift, and ICU.

Some states have legislation pending, and others have enacted participating in public reporting systems to improve accountability in their staffing ratios.

#4: Meeting Seasonal Patient Demands

There are certain periods where temporary patient influxes tend to occur year after year. From the infamous cold and flu season to cardiac and digestive stress during the end-of-year holidays to increased physical injuries surrounding the 4th of July, these spikes in patient volume bring increased staffing needs. 

The temporary nature of these increased needs aligns well with the contingent worker model, as these work assignments have a planned start and end time.

#5: Deploying Effective Surge Capacity Protocols

A “medical surge” is a significant increase in the volume of patients due to a specific mass effect incident. These surges may result in a generally large volume of patients or an unusual increase in patients requiring specialized medical attention.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the perfect example of a mass effect incident, where patient volume spiked, and specific respiratory treatments were required.

Medical surges can put a strain on the capacity of healthcare facilities. When a crisis strikes, contingent workers can be quickly brought into the facility to help fill the increased staffing needs.

#6: Quick Implementation

When there is a staffing vacancy in your healthcare operation, time is of the essence. This staffing gap represents a period of extra strain on the existing staff. This can contribute to their burnout and results in less time for patient care.

For example, recruiting a registered nurse can take three months or longer. 

A managed service provider can help quickly fill vacant positions. MSPs deal with multiple staffing vendors to ensure they can readily fill any kind of healthcare position you require, when you need it.

#7: Filling Specialized or High-Skilled Roles

While it can take multiple months to fill a typical RN position, imagine how long it could take to fill a much more specialized or high-skilled role. Filling this kind of position is especially difficult, as relocation may be necessary.

Having a vacancy in a specialized role for many months means existing patients may not get the care they need. It can lead to delays or errors in diagnosis, or to patients being turned away in favor of another facility that can treat them.

Staffing services can tap into their large network of contingent workers who are ready and willing to respond to the need. The result is much less effort and time spent trying to fill a particular position.

#8: Expanding Staffing Team Skills

Contingent healthcare workers often have experience in a variety of healthcare facilities. Their diversity of experience can add expertise in different skills and workplace processes.

Bringing these workers into your team can be beneficial, as they can share their knowledge with your team. Even if their stay with your facility is limited, the knowledge and skills they share could be long-term.

#9: Adding Service Lines

Adding a new wing or service is a major operational change involving a lot of moving parts and precision timing. This includes performing all the needed recruiting to staff up the new service in time for launch.

Hiring contingent workers can alleviate some of the effort and complexity of managing through a mass recruiting effort.

Working with a managed service provider like Trusted Managed Services can leave staffing concerns to the experts, allowing you to focus your attention where it’s most needed.

#10: Cultivating a Talent Development Pipeline

Another benefit to incorporating contingent workers into your healthcare operations is that they can feed into your long-term staffing plans.

Bringing staff in on a contingent basis allows you to experience their performance and effect on the team dynamic, giving you sufficient time to decide if they are a long-term fit with your organization.

Your managed service provider can make converting contingent staff to permanent staff pain-free. In the case of Trusted Managed Services, this transfer does not incur any additional fees.

How Can Healthcare Organizations Maximize the Benefits of Hiring Contingent Healthcare Workers?

There are so many tasks involved with managing staff. Even contingent workers require recruiting, onboarding, scheduling, and having their time tracked and billed. To maximize the benefits of employing a contingent workforce, have a healthcare MSP manage it.

A healthcare MSP will streamline recruiting contingent workers and manage day-to-day tasks such as:

• Communicating with staffing vendors
• Time-tracking
• Compliance

This means that for a significant percentage of the staff in your operation, you have a single point of contact to handle everything. Relying on that single point of contact allows you to focus on other matters while reducing the load on your administrative staff since they have less staff to focus on.

Harness the Benefits of Hiring Contingent Healthcare Staff With the Help of Trusted Managed Services

Having a healthcare MSP by your side can ensure fluctuations in staffing and patient volume do not create more operational strain than necessary. 

Protect the well-being of your staff and your patients through stable and flexible staffing levels.

Trusted Managed Services is a healthcare MSP driven by a passion for service and is ready to partner with you. Let our team help your healthcare facility operate at its best, with a dynamic workforce that’s ready and focused on delivering the best patient care possible.