COVID-19-spurred staffing shortages still are affecting many ASCs nationally.
Christina Holloway, administrator of ASC Bala Cynwyd (Pa.), joined "Beckers Ambulatory Surgery Center Podcast" to discuss the biggest trends she sees in healthcare.
This is an excerpt of the podcast. Download the full episode here.
Question: What are the top three trends that you're following in healthcare today?
Christina Holloway: There's so much disarray that has happened with a pandemic. A lot of our nurses that came out of school and were working within the facilities have been realigned to where the needs are for the world. So some of the small facilities and companies can't afford to keep up with the allure of the large upfront sign-on bonuses that the larger corporations are able to provide.
This does create complications for ASCs. These roles are needed to accommodate the social demand, and it has really decreased the applicant pools available for the smaller facilities. Keeping up with local trends, as well as the national fluxes with staffing challenges, has helped me navigate and assist the leaders within our organization.
We've got a greater need to find alternative ways of creating efficiencies within our current practices. A lot of the IT and data analytics are becoming a huge part of how we align our clinical commitments with applied science and are becoming a hot topic within healthcare itself. The intuitive electronic medical records and the app-driven functions are really becoming vital to maintaining continuity of patient care because we do have a lower volume of staffing,
So in effort to not overuse the people who are continuing to be loyal, we've got to find ways that we can make the technology that's happening within healthcare align well to keep the volume up in order to keep our doors open. Also, this well help keep healthcare affordable and provide safe surgical interventions when possible.