The health care industry is struggling to find qualified medical practitioners, especially for rural areas. Rural hospitals have the challenge of meeting their hospital needs with a scarce population of healthcare workers. Talent acquisition in the medical field has been a challenge for many HR practitioners, among other issues like burnout, repeated need for retraining, and acquiring proper state and licensing requirements for the health worker.
The biggest issue is the looming shortages experienced with an estimated 12 percent growth (2018-2028), nearly double the other occupations' projected rate. An estimated 51 percent of the registered nurses are over the ages of 50, and older is bound to cause shortages due to the late bloomer's retirements (Lytle, 2020). Schools cannot keep up the pace of producing more students to replace the aging and retiring workforce. Consequently, the HR departments will face great shortages and fierce competition in recruiting a few medical graduates.
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HR departments will have to use different tactics to keep the existing staff and lure new talent with additional perks. Recruiting in healthcare is much different from other fields. Filling medical slots is an endless task that looks for new workers well before retiring or resigning a physician. For rural areas filling a vacant post can take up to six months. Noncompete agreements stipulate that a physician should give a six-month notice for the hospital to look for a replacement (Weinhold and Gurtner, 2014). HR departments must use enticing propositions such as offering training, providing flexible working conditions, signing bonuses, and ensuring the market's total compensation packages and leaders to attract new talents. Medical HR departments have had to deal with staffing problems caused by declining morale, lack of life balance, and increased demand for healthcare, resulting in burnout.
HR departments are setting up open communication channels to receive and address complaints to have a happy, motivated team to retain the working staff. Another challenge HR practitioners in the medical field experience the variance on the different licenses that vary with states. Different states have varying rules offering their licenses and cannot be used in other jurisdictions since they do not meet the criteria required to practice medicine in that particular state.
Embracing technology is also essential to ensure the workload and repetitive tasks are automated. Infusion of new technologies and promotion of future hospitals might much be needed since the people in rural areas might not have the capabilities to visit the doctors in cities or access medical care. Embracing telehealth can be a step closer to offering good affordable care. Setting aside funds to retrain the medical worker is important since it equips them to offer fast, affordable care to many patients while avoiding burnouts (Hollenberg et al., 2013). Moreover, employing temporary workers can help reduce rural workers' workload due to medical workers' scarcity, which results in burnouts or medical errors that can be fatal.
HR has the challenging task of finding individuals who might be enticed with the idea of moving to environments that they can form better, close bonds with the patients, or the idea of moving to areas where they grew up. Developing relationships as caregivers with the residents is important as the young medical professionals can go back to their rural homes to help ease the medical shortage. Further, with the increased federal government wage index in rural areas, it will be an attractive prospect for more medical practitioners to move back home.
In conclusion, as both an employee and an HR practitioner, the article has been enlightening about how HR departments in the medical field struggle due to medical staff shortages in rural areas. Different rules are used and incorporated to accommodate the very competitive field where recruiting is problematic since HR does most of the hunting. The various HR companies should collaborate with the medical groups to urge more and more students to enroll in nursing and physician courses. Finally, technology can help ease the pressure because non-life-threatening cases can be handled via the internet on a video call.
References
Hollenberg, D., Lytle, M., Walji, R., & Cooley, K. (2013). Addressing provider shortage in underserviced areas: the role of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) providers in Canadian rural healthcare. European Journal of Integrative Medicine , 5 (1), 15-26.
Lytle, T. (2020, February 24). The Health Care Industry's Top HR Challenges . SHRM; SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/spring2020/pages/health-care-industry-top-hr-challenges.aspx
Weinhold, I., & Gurtner, S. (2014). Understanding shortages of sufficient health care in rural areas. Health Policy , 118 (2), 201-214.
