Staffing for Greater Demand

The new year is well upon us now, and as we move into the middling parts of 2016, this issue of IH Executive looks at the challenges of staffing and billing, in addition to other pressing issues. 

In this issue’s Human Resources column, associate editor Pepper Jeter speaks with staffing expert Jason Leverant, president and COO of the AtWork Group and a two-time member of Staffing Industry Analysts’ most influential “Staffing 100” list, about the issues the medical staffing industry currently faces and trends he anticipates in coming years. U.S. healthcare employers are among those increasingly leaning on staffing firms to build their contingent workforces, Leverant says, due to those firms’ value in flexibility, time and cost savings, and risk mitigation. 

The latter is a big issue: When a worker comes through a staffing firm, that firm remains their “employer of record” and holds their insurance liability. “This value,” says Leverant, “has increased exponentially based on the ACA and post-recession economic conditions.” 

Other columns in this issue look at protecting your data (an expert perspective from SurfWatch Labs) and the trend of major hospital systems creating their own pharmacies to help control drug costs. 

“There is a strong business case for having an in-house specialty pharmacy,” the Cleveland Clinic’s chief pharmacy officer, Scott Knoer, tells correspondent James Careless. “This is true in today’s fee-for-service world and translates even better to tomorrow’s global payment and population health models. But there are many other good reasons for having a specialty pharmacy in house, and the most important of those is improved patient care and outcomes.”

In Journal Watch, contributor Matt Zavadsky breaks down a study that found participants in UnitedHealth Group’s HouseCalls program had fewer admissions to hospitals and less risk of admission to nursing homes than comparable non-HouseCalls Medicare Advantage plan members and fee-for-service beneficiaries. 

In this issue’s cover feature, Jeter interviews Dr. Brent James, chief quality officer for Utah’s Intermountain Healthcare, about that organization’s service integration and clinical improvement programs for high utilizers. Intermountain used “hotspotting” to inform a comprehensive analysis of population health that not only identified current high utilizers, but also potential future high utilizers of healthcare services. 

“We’re are at a critical junction in healthcare,” says James, “where we must identify and manage all elements of care.” 

Other features examine the University of Utah Health Care’s commitment to transparency (it’s been posting patient feedback for its doctors online since 2012) and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s development of a trigger tool to identify adverse events in skilled nursing facilities. 

It’s a full issue for a world full of issues. Take it in, let us know your thoughts, and be sure not to miss all the additional content at our new website, www.ihexecutive.com.