Introduction:
The pandemic has been the primary and undeniable reason for labor shortage in the revenue cycle functions. Most of the CFOs and operations managers are trying to tackle it with various strategies. They mainly include: increasing wages, pre-eminent use of remote and outsourced workers, and RPA. Further, they are also tantalizing talent through sign-on-bonuses. In spite of all the efforts, the labor shortage is a situation which cannot be overlooked. It is not going come to an end in the near future.
Most of the Healthcare Systems laid off many RCM staff when there is a decrease in patient volumes. At this juncture, jobs in retail and non-traditional healthcare, such as home care, continue to lure RCM staff due to better pay.
The massive backlog of accounts receivable turned out to be another crisis that threatens the very survival of healthcare systems. One can squabble that the health systems have welcomed this challenge onto themselves. Still, the completely unpredictable nature of the pandemic is the main culprit behind ad-hoc staff layoffs. This has ultimately ventured into backlog, in particular.
The immense pressure thrown on those RCM staff members who have stayed loyal really makes the heads turn. Operations leaders now fathom the paramountcy of investments in tools and automation subsequently. This aspect should have been given a try when the times were better. ‘Staff burnout’ is an essential issue that health systems must embark on with better engagement.
Physician Burnout
Physician burnout is another issue that healthcare workforce are facing currently. At the time of the Pandemic, most of the health systems had to continue to render mission-critical support to the patients. Physicians worked relentlessly as the pandemic crippled the nation. In the post-pandemic era, patients seeking treatment for permissive procedures have multiplied manifold.
As per the recent study, over 60% of physicians accept that they are completely burning out. The top-most reasons cited are lack of digital tools.
Outsourcing revenue cycle services can provide the solution.
Revenue Cycle Outsourcing
- Outsourcing RCM processes can facilitate hospitals and healthcare system by enabling physicians to see more patients.
- Providing an RCM workforce that proffers the capacity to process the enormous backlog of claims
- Effectuating the best practices to help physicians slash the time spent on clinical documentation
Managing employee burnout efficiently is an ongoing challenge for administrators. Moreover, the pandemic has only added fuel to the flames of an already pressing workplace issue. Today, as guidelines and policies stick around, the medical billing staff experience further pressure in addition to their daily stressors.
Staff Capacity- Evaluation
You can do this by averaging the weekly number of tasks and the hours needed to consummate each task. It will be followed by the counter checking of your current staff’s capacity.
Workload Distribution
Assigning complex tasks to high-performers is always reasonable. On the contrary, switching up work assignments every so often and then adjusting distribution accordingly could stabilize the staff capacities. This will potentially lower the burnout risk to a large extent.
It is very vital to communicate with all parties involved before you go with the strategy implementation. By doing so, you can prevent your high-performers from thinking that the task re-allocations are due to under-performance.
Staff Flexibility- Enhancement
Aggrandizing work schedule flexibility and autonomy is a phenomenal aspect of avoiding revenue cycle staff burnout.
Exceptional Training
If you are currently experiencing a high turnover rate during the pandemic, then it is an indicator that you should watch out your on-boarding process and training.
In addition to getting enrolled in training courses, employees benefit from having a higher level of involvement where there is an interaction between new and senior employees.
Training to be Considered:
- Technical and soft -skills training
- Time Management
- Project Management
- Communication
- Leadership
Training sessions should be interactive and should kindle one-on-one consultation afterward.
Technology Investment
Equip your teams with the mandatory tools that streamline, simplify, and automate the processes, in particular. An automated medical billing system must be updated and enhanced upon regularly to ensure efficiency.
Feedback
An optimized feedback management system is dexterously overlooked across many big teams. By all means, taking the pulse of your staff members is one efficient way to gauge the expectations. In addition, it is mandatory to re-evaluate policies, and improve upon areas that pave way to healthcare worker burnout.
Acquiring feedback from your staff members will naturally open opportunities for growth, such as:
- Finding out areas of improvement
- Providing due credit
- Conflict Mitigation
- Boosting Staff Engagement
On the whole, it can be said that ‘Negative feedback’ is not necessarily a bad one. Administrators should take a glimpse of these negative reviews as insights to build employee related policies and regulations by and large.
Wrap Up:
We must admit that job burnout/staff burnout is a complex and also difficult problem prevailing in most of the enterprises during any epidemic. In order to address COVID-19 or other similar public health crises, enterprises can come up with social support for employees to dwindle their job burnout. They can also help with material resources considerably. If the organization effectively connects with its employees then it can arrest staff burnout in an efficient manner.
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