Company overview

Learn more about how our vast array of solutions and best-in-class technologies are powerfully serving the healthcare workforce. 

Our brands

They say you can’t choose your family – but we did. We think you will, too. Our family of companies can tackle problems of any size, big or small. 

Our role in healthcare

Learn more about how we use our unrivaled staffing experience, best-in-class technology, and strategic consultation to help your organization succeed.

Executive leadership

Meet our team of executive leaders who are guiding our efforts to make life better for providers, patients, and healthcare organizations. 

Core values

See how our core values guide all our business decisions and drive us to find new ways to make life better for those we serve in the healthcare industry.

Community impact

Learn more about how we give back to communities both near and far through fundraisers, team activities, medical missions, and more. 

Solutions overview

See how we’re delivering customized workforce solutions that are doing right by our healthcare partners and improving how healthcare is done. 

Technology

Check out our suite of high-tech solutions that perfectly complement our high-touch approach to a future-ready workforce. 

Strategic consultation

We’re experts in exactly one healthcare staffing solution: yours. Partner with our experts to build a workforce strategy tailored specifically to you. 

Physicians

See how our experts draw from the industry’s largest locums database to deliver customized solutions such as locum tenens, permanent placement, and telehealth.

Advanced practice

Get insights into how our team of APP-specific experts use in-house credentialing and licensing to deliver the right candidate to your facility.

Allied health

Learn more about the process we use to connect your organization with qualified therapists, technicians, technologists, assistants, and more.

Nurses

Find out what makes our nurse staffing truly stand out in the industry, and how we’re constantly looking for new ways to make the process smoother.

Telehealth

Tap into the nation’s largest network and deepest specialty bench of multi-state license providers to keep your virtual care strategies on track.

Blog

Visit our blog to get workforce insights, catch the latest company updates, and hear important stories from within the healthcare industry.

Resources

Get industry insights, workforce strategies, and more from our resource section. Each video, article, and tool has been created with your success in mind. 

Careers overview

Get the details on how a career at CHG fast-tracks your success and lets you play a role in helping 25 million patients receive care each year.

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Locations

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Benefits

Browse our benefit and wellness programs and learn how our team handpicks the best options to support you as a whole person.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Learn about the DEI goals we’re embracing to make our company¬–and healthcare industry at large–a better home for everyone.

Learning and development

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Employee stories

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Flexibility

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Talent network

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Recruiting process

Learn more about our hiring process and how we seek out the best opportunities for you to make an immediate impact.

2022 Healthcare staffing outlook: A more competitive market and higher rates of burnout

physician and pediatric patient - healthcare staffing outlook

The healthcare industry has faced unprecedented and unpredictable staffing challenges over the past two years, and the healthcare crisis is far from over. We asked the leaders of CHG Healthcare’s staffing brands to share their predictions and advice on how to address the staffing challenges of the year ahead. Here’s what they had to say about the growing competition to attract and retain providers in 2022.

Demand for providers is at an all-time high

The return of patients seeking care for elective and non-emergent procedures — combined with heightened acuity in many cases — is resulting in exponential growth in demand for physicians and other care providers. This is true for both permanent positions and temporary services.  “Demand for our services is as high as it’s ever been in my time in locums,” says Tyler Black, president of Global Medical Staffing, which specializes in domestic and international locums tenens physician staffing.

While demand for locums physicians has roared back in the U.S., international demand is growing but lagging behind, Black says. “Internationally, we’re still probably 25% down in job demand than we were prior to COVID,” he says. “As international travel becomes more open, we believe the job demand that we would see in pre-COVID times will expand and fully recover.”

Feeling the squeeze from a shrinking labor market

While demand is on the rise, however, the healthcare workforce is shrinking, resulting in increased competition for a limited resource. Luke Woodyard, president of Weatherby Healthcare, says the pre-existing provider shortage has only been worsened by the pandemic, because many physicians are saying enough is enough.

“The problem has been amplified by provider burnout; it’s been a long couple of years, and some physicians are looking for a change or want to do something different,” he says. “Knowing how competitive the market is, it’s already becoming incredibly hard to find permanent or temporary candidates to fill open positions.”

Lisa Grabl, president of CompHealth Locum Tenens, is seeing the same trend. “Physicians understand the demand that is out there right now. Demand is very, very high, so they know they have a lot of options,” she says.

Higher demand means that providers can afford to be pickier about the positions they accept, as well as compensation, work-life balance, and more. “We have one specialty where we have increased pay roughly 60%,” Grabl says. “There are people who are paying double for locum providers to what we were paying pre-COVID.”

Addressing provider burnout

Provider burnout has become one of the biggest challenges faced by many healthcare organizations. It means patient ratios are staying high and hours are long — especially for nurses, who are spread thinner than ever. Lynne Gross, president of RNnetwork, which provides domestic travel nurse staffing, says that’s one of the reasons many nurses have decided to leave their jobs.

“Nurses have worked so hard through the pandemic, and they’re tired. So they’re cutting back their hours, they’re taking time off, or they’re saying, ‘I’ll go be a traveler and make more money,’” Gross explains. “That’s fueling the nurse shortage and pushing up pricing.”

The worsening shortage has made it harder for facilities to fully staff nurses, thus perpetuating the cycle of burnout.

Many physicians are considering leaving their jobs due to burnout as well. One of the ways healthcare organizations are addressing the burnout problem is by bringing in locum providers to provide additional coverage and give their staff physicians an opportunity to take time off and recharge.

“Locums is a great option to prevent provider burnout,” Woodyard says. “If you know that your providers have a lot on their plate, are overworked, or are picking up additional shifts, make sure you stay connected with your provider pool and say, ‘What resources do you need to give you some relief?’”

Grabl says enabling them to cut back to an abbreviated schedule for a few months or take an extended break to rejuvenate may give staff providers the time to recover they need.

It’s also important to have processes in place to consistently enroll locum tenens providers and bill properly for their hours, according to Grabl. That way locum providers can help maintain hospital revenue while permanent staff are away. “It’s important to maximize the level of reimbursement you can receive for locum tenens coverage,” she says. “And we can help you with that process so that your locums will generate revenue and not just feel like an expense.”

How to win in a competitive market

In addition to addressing provider burnout, several actions can help healthcare organizations stand in a tight labor market. Increasing pay is perhaps the most obvious — and pay is definitely important — but there are many ways to attract providers to get the coverage you need.

Think beyond pay. “Facilities have to think about what is important to providers,” Woodyard says. “Is it just about compensation? Probably not. It’s about workplace environment, culture, connection, and the relationship. You have to ask yourself what else is important to your providers, because it’s not always just about the pay.”

Offer schedule flexibility. “One of the reasons nurses leave to travel is they want flexibility. So if you can find ways to provide more flexibility for your permanent nurses, it will make them more inclined to stay,” Gross suggests.

Provide additional support. Keep staffing levels high so “you’re not overworking your core staff,” Gross says. Providers need to be able to take time off — even to simply take lunch breaks. “You can pay someone all the money — and sure, they’ll do it for a bit, but then they’re so burned out. You need the right staffing levels to match the patient ratios.”

Offer wellness services. “Have programs or services in place for mental healthcare or advocating self-care,” Grabl recommends. “Clinicians need a chance to truly regroup and regenerate.”

Move fast. “Our customers are feeling a pinch and so are 2,000 other healthcare organizations. So the speed at which you move will help you with your deliverability,” Black says.

Fully staff your credentialing department. When the credentialing department isn’t fully staffed, providers may experience delays before they can start a new job — giving them time to accept another offer. “One of the things we're seeing is start dates are not always happening as originally planned; they're having to push back,” Grabl says.

Be nimble and flexible. “You know you might not find the exact match in a high demand marketplace, and you have to determine which is more important: finding the exact match and maybe taking longer to fill the need or having some flexibility,” Woodyard says. For example, if a facility is looking for a full-time cardiologist, “maybe you won’t be able to fill that schedule with one cardiologist, maybe it will take two in order to provide the level of care. Maybe that will still meet your needs, but it wasn’t your first ideal solution.”

Work with partners that can help

Now is the best time to develop a strong partnership with a staffing agency who can help you address your staffing challenges. “You don’t want to wait until you have an opening to have a relationship and partnership with a staffing organization,” Woodyard says. “You want to start that relationship now and create that understanding of what your facility is trying to accomplish not only currently but in the next year or two.”

“I always encourage our customers to be thoughtful around the vendors they work with,” says Black, who advises facilities to “be selective with the right organizations to help you through these challenging times — the organizations that tend to do it the right way and that have resources and technologies and processes to lean into what you need and how you want to operate.”

A true staffing partner will “really understand what the clients are going through and what their pain points are,” Woodyard adds.

CHG Healthcare’s family of brands can provide your healthcare facility with the physicians, nurses, and advanced practice providers you need to grow your organization. To learn more, contact us by phone at  866.588.5996 or email ecs.contact@chghealthcare.com.

About the author

Heather Stewart

Heather Stewart is a journalist who frequently covers issues and trends in the healthcare industry.

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