A new Web site will help family members who care for Medicare and Medicaid patients navigate through the healthcare system. The Ask Medicare site was launched to help caregivers with Medicare enrollment, billing, drug plans, financial concerns, and selecting a nursing home. One in five adults provide care to a relative, friend, or neighbor, according to CMS.
As many strive toward heightened innovation, some are not quite there yet. However, there are several steps organizations can take to embrace new ideas and engage external collaborators.
We've all heard the reports. The U.S. healthcare system will need more than one million new registered nurses by 2020. Thousands of nursing school applicants are turned away each year because there isn't enough nursing faculty, clinical sites, and classroom space. The shortage of registered nurses in the United States could reach as high as 500,000 by 2025. More than one-third of baby boomer nurses (age 45 to 60) plan to retire or change their career in the next one to three years.
It's no wonder CEOs are taking an active role in nursing recruitment and retention efforts. Given these forecasts the competition for nurses is going to get even more intense, and it is going to take more than sign-on bonuses and financial rewards to attract new nurse recruits to your facility. (See Show Them More Than $ in the September issue of HealthLeaders magazine.) Nurses want to work for an employer of choice—a Magnet facility, one of the best places to work, or a healthcare organization that offers them:
Empowerment: A collaborative environment where nurses are respected and involved in decision-making processes. For example, they want to have a say in their patient's care and the technologies purchased.
Flexible scheduling: To help them balance their professional and personal lives.
Mentoring programs: To help new nurses transition into the workplace environment.
Continuing education opportunities: To help them further their career and realize opportunities within the organization.
Technology: To reduce the amount of time that they spend on paperwork, so that they can spend more time at the bedside.
Concierge services: To help them achieve work/life balance.
Fair compensation: They may not care only about financial perks, but they still want fair compensation for their efforts
These strategies can make your organization more appealing to nurses. But no amount of nurse-friendly programs can undo the damage of a frontline nurse manager who is controlling, unfriendly, or abusive to fellow employees. People quit jobs solely because they don't like their direct supervisor—regardless of the benefits, job perks, and growth potential offered by the facility. In essence, these frontline managers are all chief retention officers. Some nurses are more proactive and may ask to move to a different department or report bad behavior to senior leaders, but many nurses will simply hand in their notice and move on.
Ideally, bad bosses just need additional training in conflict resolution management, leadership styles, or on how to build a positive work environment. (I'm assuming of course that they received at least some training when promoted or hired to the position, which is not always the case.) But some frontline nurse managers just don't have the skills, personality traits, or desire to be an effective leader and no amount of training or support will change that. Those are the managers who are driving away staff, lowering productivity, and hurting morale. They need to be removed from supervisory positions—and fast.
Before you start firing nurse managers, however, take a look at their workload, the demands on their time, and the workplace environment. These factors may be contributing to their ineffectiveness as a leader. But if, at the end of the day, the manager in question continues to receive negative feedback from subordinates and fellow coworkers despite the additional support provided, it is probably time to find a new role for this individual or cut them from the team.
None of these programs and strategies will completely eliminate nursing turnover. But they can lower turnover rates and improve employee satisfaction, which can help establish your hospital as a place that nurses want to work at. So when a vacancy does arise, you'll have a dozen qualified applicants—or at least one or two—on hand to fill the position.
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According to UC Davis researchers, premature babies who are sheltered in sterile environments cannot easily pick up good intestinal bacteria, making them vulnerable to dangerous bacteria. Next month, researchers plan to begin working to guide bacteria colonization in efforts to encourage good microbes and discourage the bad.
Sharklet Technologies has developed a silicon film that copies the shape and pattern of shark scales, preventing bacteria buildup on its surface. The pattern of shark scales could potentially be a fighter in the war on infections.
New restrictions on how insurers can sell private health and prescription drug plans for people covered by Medicare are set to take effect Oct. 1, federal officials have announced. The regulations, meant to deter deceptive and aggressive marketing tactics, prohibit telemarketing, door-to-door sales and other unsolicited sales pitches.
Florida state officials say a new health insurance program could serve as a model for healthcare reform across the nation. Cover Florida, which will begin in January, will make health insurance available to the nearly 3.8 million residents statewide who are currently without coverage.
A new report by Families USA has found that healthcare premiums for Ohio workers have grown nearly nine times as fast as wages, while premiums for family plans grew more than 75%. Wages have risen by just 8.9%.
Tufts Health Plan of Massachusetts will return to Rhode Island to challenge Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and UnitedHealthcare of New England, both of which are currently dominating the market. While state officials welcome Tufts' return, they say the competition will likely not lead to reductions in premiums.
Officials at USC's Keck School of Medicine report that the new County-USC Medical Center that is slated to open next month will not be able to operate safely under the current staffing level, calling it an "impending patient safety crisis." However, Los Angeles County officials say the facility will have the necessary staffing by mid-October.
