If your resolution is to be fully staffed in the New Year, look to Saint Francis Medical Center's newly-launched recruitment campaign for inspiration. Facing a growing regional healthcare employee shortage, Saint Francis, in Cape Girardeau, MO, needed to fill 26 nursing positions immediately and hoped to hire as many as 100 new nurses each year going forward.
Working with The Roberts Group in Waukesha, WI, Saint Francis developed a multimedia recruitment campaign. An internal employee referral program combined with a mix of print, TV, outdoor, online, and a DVD were used to drive the audience to a new micro site (YourNursingFuture.com) where users can watch streaming video featuring real St. Francis nurses, request more information, apply online, and forward the link to friends. The hospital also plans to add a blog.
The results of the campaign should alleviate doubts about the effectiveness of online campaigns. After the first week, the hospital received more than 250 employee referrals. After four weeks, the number jumped to 750. After three months, Saint Francis filled 16 of 26 nursing vacancies. The average visitor was spending almost four minutes on their site--five times longer than the national average for other Web site users.
Two doctors are planning on opening urgent care clinics in Fort Worth and Arlington, TX. The clinics are targeting patients with minor injuries, infections, and other ailments that often prompt visits to hospital emergency rooms.
The insurance industry says coverage for weight-loss surgery is not justified because of concerns about safety and long-term effectiveness. But advocates for the obese are blaming prejudice and outdated views of the risks involved.
Some intensive-care units in New York and South Carolina are about to get copper fittings as part of a project to test if drug-resistant bacteria survive better on stainless steel than on copper.
During an 18-month pilot project, nine California hospitals were able to prevent an estimated 600 healthcare-associated infections by using a data-mining program to comb through computerized records and flagging infections to thwart their spread.
San Francisco will move ahead with plans to expand health services for uninsured residents while appealing a federal court ruling that, if upheld, could thwart the city's effort to achieve universal coverage.