Staffing shortages aren’t going away, and healthcare organizations are paying the price.
Healthcare providers across the U.S. continue to grapple with challenges caused by staffing shortages, including turnover, increased labor costs, and heightened levels of staff burnout.
And the critical healthcare workforce shortage isn’t going away any time soon. Projections show that the U.S. needs over 3.6 million RNs by 20301 and the long-term care sector needs to fill 8.2 million direct care positions by 2028.2
Despite providers’ efforts to address workforce challenges, a 2023 survey revealed that nursing turnover – although slightly reduced from its peak in 2021 – remained higher than pre-pandemic levels. Additionally, a significant portion of nurses were considering leaving their positions, with about 20% having changed jobs in the previous six months and approximately 39% contemplating leaving their current roles within the next six months.3
Burnout is the major culprit. Well over half of the nurses surveyed expressed a variety of feelings related to burnout. Unsurprisingly, the top reason cited for workplace burnout was “not enough staff to allow me to adequately do my job.”
For hospitals, the cost of turnover can considerably diminish margins. In 2023, the average cost of turnover for a staff RN was $52,350 – $6,000 more than the year before.4 And these figures don’t consider the domino effect on leadership roles, revenue cycle management, and quality of care.
The good news? A mere 1% decrease in RN turnover translates to annual savings of $380,600.4
A strategy focused on improving nurse retention is key to making this happen.
The long-term care sector must fill
8.2 million direct care positions
by 2028
Hospital CEOs cite workforce challenges stemming primarily from personnel shortages as their top concern, with financial challenges a close second.5
Addressing staffing shortages across care settings
Promote collaboration and communication among your nursing teams
Burnout among nurses is a complex issue influenced by various factors, including workload, emotional stress, and the quality of interpersonal relationships at work. A collaborative culture can address these stressors by ensuring that nurses feel supported and understood by their colleagues and managers. A more supportive environment can reduce symptoms of depression and improve overall mental health, alleviating feelings of burnout that can lead to turnover.
Fostering collaboration and communication within nursing teams contributes significantly to job satisfaction – a critical factor in reducing intentions to leave. Nurses who experience high-quality communication and teamwork report greater satisfaction with their roles and current positions.
Regular and routine communication and information sharing are essential to building transparency, collaboration, and patient-centered care. Nurse leaders can support the well-being of staff nurses by communicating openly, listening respectfully, articulating expectations clearly, and offering constructive feedback.
Effective approaches to improve collaboration and communication include:
- Encouraging nurses to develop their communication skills to enhance relationships within their team
- Building an environment of trust, collaboration, and open communication that demonstrates respect and value toward team members
- Delegating responsibilities and autonomy to empower nurses to utilize their experience and decision-making skills
- Adopting methods and tools that enable frequent, clear communication, such as a handoff template, huddles, and collaborative scheduling in real time can increase job satisfaction
Help your nurses achieve better work-life balance
Many healthcare professionals are seeking a work-life balance that enables them to better manage the stress inherent to their jobs, attend to personal needs more easily, and simply enjoy some much-needed downtime. In a survey of nurses who had recently left their direct patient care roles, over half of them shared that “no work-life” balance was a top factor in their decision to leave.6
Healthcare organizations can improve nurse retention by addressing a key aspect of work-life balance: schedule flexibility. Studies show that schedule flexibility improves job satisfaction and nurse retention while irregular working hours and on-call duties can be detrimental.7 A lack of flexibility may increase the likelihood of no-shows and callouts, which add pressure and stress on nursing teams, aggravating the cycle of burnout and turnover. Giving staff autonomy over their schedule is an excellent way to engage nurses in their work and create a sense of collaboration among the team.
You can keep your nurses on board by helping them strike the right balance in their lives with scheduling technology that:
- Makes it easy for them to trade shifts or fill open shifts
- Allows them to self-schedule
- Offers them more scheduling options
- Uses real-time data to ease workloads
Augment your nursing staff using a data-driven approach
Hospitals are relying on travel and agency nurses more heavily than ever. According to the American Hospital Association, the total hours worked by travel nurses as a percentage of the total hours worked by hospital nurses grew from 4% in 2019 to 23% in 2022.8 A recent survey revealed that about eight out of 10 long-term care providers hired temporary agency staff to adjust for staffing shortages.9 Considering that agency nurses can command more than three times the hourly rate of staff nurses,10 the high costs associated with leaning on agency nurses is a significant concern for healthcare leaders.
Despite the upfront costs, supplementing your nursing staff with agency nurses can be a cost-effective strategy in the long run. By filling gaps quickly, agency nurses can alleviate workload pressures on existing staff, maintain the quality of patient care, and reduce the need for overtime.
Leveraging a data-driven approach to staffing enables healthcare organizations to optimize their use of agency nurses. By analyzing staffing data, leaders can identify patterns and trends in staff turnover and burnout, allowing for targeted interventions that balance the need for agency nurses with the goal of retaining permanent staff and managing costs effectively.
This strategic approach ensures that the use of agency nurses is not just a reactive measure to staffing shortages, but a calculated component of broader workforce management and retention strategies – ultimately preserving the organization’s bottom line while ensuring high-quality patient care.
Address workflow inefficiencies across operations
Workflow inefficiencies lead to a cascade of poor outcomes for both staff and patients. Inefficient workflows create bottlenecks across functions, increasing the administrative burden on healthcare workers and wasting time that could otherwise be spent on patient care.
Time lost to inefficiencies can lead to delays in patient care, which may reduce the quality of care and patient satisfaction. When nurses are mired in redundant tasks, manual processes, and poor communication, their morale plummets – increasing the risk of burnout, turnover, and medical errors.
Addressing workflow inefficiencies through automation can significantly enhance staff efficiency and satisfaction, ultimately leading to better patient care and staff retention. Given that reducing operating costs and revenue cycle management are two of the top financial challenges identified by hospital leaders,5 leveraging technology to simplify and enhance workflows can free up resources to address staffing gaps more effectively. Two examples include:
- Revenue cycle management: Automation can streamline billing, claims processing, and payment collection, reducing errors and improving cash flow.
- Workforce management: Advanced scheduling software can efficiently allocate staff and auto- approve open shifts based on patient needs, staff availability, overtime requirements, and skill sets, reducing the time and effort required for manual scheduling.
Set your nursing teams up for success
If your organization is struggling to maintain operating margins in the fallout of ongoing healthcare worker shortages, a practical, retention-focused approach is in order. With the right technology, you can drive team collaboration, promote work-life balance, optimize staffing, and streamline workflows – all crucial factors for keeping your nurses happy and on board while protecting the bottom line.
Start addressing your staffing shortage
Learn more on streamlining and automating the scheduling process across your patient care teams.
1 “The States with the Largest Nursing Shortages,” Katherine Burger, Registered Nursing.org, November 11, 2023, https://www.registerednursing. org/articles/largest-nursing-shortages/.
2 “Staffing Shortages Have U.S. Nursing Homes in Crisis,” Dennis Thompson, U.S. News & World Report, June 29, 2022, https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-06-29/staffing-shortages-have-u-s-nursing-homes-in-crisis.
3 “American Nurses Foundation, Pulse on the Nation’s Nurses Survey Series: Mental Health and Wellness Survey 4,” ANA, May 2023, https://www. nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/health-safety/disaster-preparedness/coronavirus/what-you-need-to-know/survey-4/.
4 “2023 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report,” NSI Nursing Solutions, Inc, March 2023, https://www.nsinursingsolutions.com/Documents/Library/NSI_National_Health_Care_Retention_Report.pdf.
5 “Top Issues Confronting Hospitals Survey,” ACHE, 2024, https://www.ache.org/learning-center/research/about-the-field/top-issues- confronting-hospitals.
6 “Nursing in 2023: How hospitals are confronting shortages,” Gretchen Berlin, McKinsey & Company, May 5, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/nursing-in-2023.
7 “The Race to Retain Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review on Factors that Impact Retention of Nurses and Physicians in Hospitals.” Neeltje de Vries et al, Inquiry, vol. 60 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580231159318.
8 “AHA Senate Statement on Examining Health Care Workforce Shortages: Where Do We Go From Here?” American Hospital Association, February 16, 2023, https://www.aha.org/testimony/2023-02-15-aha-senate-statement-examining-health-care-workforce-shortages-where-do- we-go-here.
9 “State of the Nursing Home Industry: Survey of 524 nursing home providers highlights persistent staffing and economic crisis,” AHCA, January 2023, https://www.ahcancal.org/News-and-Communications/Fact-Sheets/FactSheets/SNF-Survey-December-2022.pdf.
10 “How Much Do Travel Nurses Make?” Courtney Smith-Kimble, NurseJournal.org, September 27, 2023, https://nursejournal.org/careers/
travel-nurse/salary/.
