Fight healthcare staff shortages with workforce augmentation

The healthcare industry is grappling with significant staffing shortages which have far-reaching implications for patient care, operational efficiency, and overall service delivery. As medical practices struggle to maintain adequate staffing levels, the administrative burden often falls onto existing personnel, exacerbating burnout and reducing the quality of patient interactions.

In this challenging landscape, ARIA Health Services by CompuGroup Medical offers an alternative solution by augmenting a practice’s administrative workforce without the need for additional hiring.

For practices that want to keep most of their operations in-house, workforce augmentation offers the assistance they need in the short term. A practice can essentially buy breathing room by leveraging a professional team to help when they need it.

Healthcare staffing shortages are not a new phenomenon, but the situation has worsened in recent years. Several factors contribute to this issue:

• Aging workforce: A significant portion of the healthcare workforce is approaching retirement age, leading to a steady decline in available personnel.
• Increased demand: The growing and aging population requires more healthcare services, increasing the demand for healthcare professionals.
• Burnout: High levels of stress and burnout, especially exacerbated by COVID-19, have led many clinical and administrative workers to leave the profession. Those remaining are given more work, and this leads to more burnout and more team members leaving, often quite suddenly. This vicious cycle gives healthcare business little time to fill their positions with appropriately qualified replacements..
• Educational bottlenecks: The pipeline for training new healthcare professionals is not keeping pace with demand, creating a lag in workforce replenishment.

Every healthcare employer knows that the hiring process itself is fraught with challenges:

• Lengthy recruitment processes: Finding qualified candidates takes time, often extending the period during which existing staff must cover additional duties. This impacts other important tasks, increasing the real cost of the shortage.
• High costs: Recruitment, training, and onboarding of new employees are costly endeavors. Healthcare facilities must invest significant resources before new hires can contribute effectively.
• Retention issues: Even after successfully hiring new staff, retaining them can be difficult due to the demanding nature of the work and competitive job market.
• Regulatory compliance: The healthcare industry is heavily regulated, and ensuring that new hires meet all legal and professional standards adds another layer of complexity to the hiring and training process.

In light of these challenges, healthcare providers are increasingly turning to innovative solutions to bridge staffing gaps. ARIA Health Services by CompuGroup Medical offers workforce augmentation to enhance and optimize administrative and billing operations efficiency, enabling practices to maintain high standards of patient care without the need for additional hiring.

Key features of ARIA Health Services

• Streamlined administrative processes: ARIA Health Services teams up with a practice to manage all or part of its revenue cycle including billing, coding, enrollment, credentialing, payment posting, appeals, authorizations, or other elements of the overall revenue cycle. This reduces the workload on existing staff, allowing them to focus more on patient care.
• Enhanced communication: ARIA facilitates better communication with practice managers. Each practice has its own, dedicated ARIA account representative to deliver reports, respond to any concerns, and make sure that ARIA is aligned with the practice and its goals.
• Data integration and analytics: ARIA Health Services integrates seamlessly with existing practice management systems and provides valuable insights through data analytics.
• Regulatory compliance: The experts at ARIA are well-versed in the ever-changing regulations surrounding healthcare coding and compliance. Practices who partner with ARIA will ensure that all administrative processes adhere to legal standards and reduce the risk of non-compliance penalties.

Benefits of using workforce augmentation

• Cost-effective: By leveraging ARIA to handle administrative, healthcare providers reduce the need for additional hires and save on recruitment and training.
• Scalability: ARIA Health Services can be scaled to meet the needs of practices of all sizes, from small clinics to large hospitals. Our billing experts can tackle a practice’s aging AR or take on the entirety of their revenue cycle.
• Improved staff morale: Reducing administrative burdens allows healthcare professionals to focus on their primary roles, improving job satisfaction and reducing burnout.
• Enhanced patient experience: Streamlined processes and better communication lead to a more efficient and pleasant experience for patients, fostering trust and loyalty.
• Better collections: Overworked teams experience higher error rates in areas ranging from coding and billing to eligibility and verification checking. The result is more denials, more work, more cost, lower patient satisfaction—they also have to deal with mistakes—and less revenue collected. Boosted by workforce augmentation, a practice reduces financial pressure, creates a healthier claims rate, and improves patient service.

As healthcare practices continue to face staffing shortages, the need for innovative solutions becomes increasingly urgent.

ARIA Health Services by CompuGroup Medical provides a comprehensive platform that augments the administrative workforce, reducing the need for additional hiring and alleviating the burdens on existing staff. By embracing such technology, healthcare providers can navigate their current challenges and continue to deliver high-quality care to their patients.

To learn more about using ARIA Health Services to augment a practice’s workforce, contact us today.