Healthcare Staffing Made Simple
TAG MedStaffing is an experienced healthcare staffing company that partners with medical facilities to address their recruitment and staffing needs, specializing in providing quality nurses, physicians, technicians and other professionals during this time of severe industry talent shortages.
Your Trusted Partner In Overcoming the Healthcare Workforce Crisis
Headline after alarming headline tells of a brewing storm – a country facing critical healthcare staffing shortages with no end in sight. A recent Elsevier report shows over 23% of nursing and medical students are considering abandoning their programs, with 16% doubting their career choice.
As the shortage reaches crisis levels, medical facilities need an experienced partner. Enter TAG MedStaffing. With over 16 years of recruiting experience, we have a proven track record of matching quality healthcare professionals with the right positions, ensuring our clients are fully staffed with dedicated nurses, therapists, technicians and more.
Given pressing recruitment challenges due to shortages, we highlight key focus areas below and cover on how we can assist as your specialized recruiting partner.
Breaking Down Nursing Barriers to Address Shortages
As the nation faces a critical shortage of nurses, experts say hospitals, nursing schools, and healthcare leaders should work to expand and diversify their talent pool. This includes re-examining biases and misunderstandings about who can succeed in nursing, as well as considering the benefits that international nurses educated in the U.S. can bring to the healthcare workforce.
An article from Beckers Hospital Review (BHR) found that international nurses are currently overlooked due to ineffective systems and outdated conceptions of outside talent. Embracing these nurses and creating a more inclusive field could help strengthen the healthcare system to better serve our diverse population. Without action, experts warn shortages may only worsen.
Patient Safety & Quality Care Act Concerns
The proposed Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (H.R.2530 and S.1113) aims to address the nurse shortage and improve patient care by federally mandating minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. However, healthcare facilities across the United States may struggle to comply due to the widening gap between demand and supply of nurses.
Many hospitals, especially rural and public hospitals, are already facing critical nursing shortages and lack the budget to hire the additional staff needed to meet fixed ratios. Below we unpack some of the key concerns with this proposed bill.
1. Recruitment Difficulties and Retention Issues
Rigid nationwide ratios don’t account for differences across units, shifts, patient needs, and other variables that require flexibility in nurse staffing plans. Ratios that are too inflexible could actually undermine patient care and safety. Nurse managers may also lose authority over dynamic staffing decisions.
2. Concerns Over Inflexible Ratios
Rigid nationwide ratios don’t account for differences across units, shifts, patient needs, and other variables that require flexibility in nurse staffing plans. Ratios that are too inflexible could actually undermine patient care and safety. Nurse managers may also lose authority over dynamic staffing decisions.
3. Financial and Workforce Strain
Complying with ratio requirements will incur significant new costs for hiring more nurses, as well as regulatory compliance and reporting. Many hospitals already face financial strain. Without measures to expand the nursing workforce, costs may be passed on to patients. Alternatively, support roles may be cut or converted into unregulated positions, further increasing nurses’ workloads.
4. Visa System Deters Talented Candidates
The complex, fluctuating U.S. visa system and lengthy sponsorship process make hiring qualified international candidates intimidating, despite the benefits of skilled immigration and the urgent need to address the crisis. International talent can help close linguistic and cultural gaps in underserved communities. With over 40% of the U.S. population people of color, diversity is critical, as only 15% of nurses and 29% of doctors are foreign-born.
5. Collaboration Needed to Ease Barriers
As challenges restrict the flow of international nurses, the U.S. has lost 100,000 nurses since COVID-19, as reported by ICYMI. Retirements, turnover, stress, and burnout have accelerated, with dire implications. After years of growth, 2022 saw the first nursing school enrollment decline since 2000.
Experts urge collaboration between public and private institutions to streamline pathways for skilled international students. Partnerships between hospitals and nursing schools can create supportive talent pipelines. Policymakers must also ease immigration pathways for healthcare workers, like adding nursing to STEM OPT eligibility.
Embracing solutions that remove systemic barriers and misperceptions is key to improving nurse retention, outcomes, diversity, and the nursing profession overall.
Our Compliance Support Services
With access to one of the largest networks of qualified nurses, we can help fill gaps to assist you in meeting and maintaining federal and state-mandated ratios cost-effectively.
As your staffing partner, we will collaborate with you to not only meet ratio requirements but also address the underlying retention issues driving shortages. Together, we can ensure you have the staffing needed to deliver the highest caliber of patient care.
Leverage Our Services to Meet Future Demands
This bill would substantially increase nurse staffing needs, likely exceeding what stretched healthcare facilities can currently meet. The growing demand and evolving pressures give us a chance to further our focus of connecting healthcare professionals with facilities looking for qualified talent.
While healthcare facilities see barriers, we see a chance to deploy our specialized expertise and resources to help clients optimize nurse staffing, meet requirements, deliver excellent patient care, and support the nurses carrying out this vital work.
We recognize the immense value nurses of all backgrounds bring when barriers are removed. We work to build inclusive, talent pipelines by utilizing all available resources to ensure qualified candidates of all backgrounds can find work.
The TAG MedStaffing Mission
Our mission is to match top healthcare professionals with great jobs so they can provide the best possible care for their patients. Our ultimate goal is to provide thoughtful, targeted recruitment research, apply strong business ethics and combine it all with the industry expertise that our team members accumulated as business professionals themselves to deliver targeted results.
It’s this convergence of successful, like-minded recruiting professionals that has strengthened and propelled a passionate, results-oriented culture for the clients we serve and the candidates and employees we support. Our recruiters build long-term relationships with both clients and candidates – our clients trust us to be a reliable source for professional talent, and candidates trust us with their careers and that we will guide them accordingly.
Industry Insights
The 10 Hottest Healthcare Jobs Right Now
We list the top 10 in-demand healthcare jobs in 2024 and beyond. It states registered nurses, medical assistants, physical therapists, medical managers, diagnostic sonographers, pharmacists, surgical technologists, occupational therapy assistants, dental hygienists, and speech language pathologists are seeing high growth.
What Facilities Should Know About Onboarding Travel Nurses
As demand ebbs and flows, medical facilities increasingly rely on travel nurses to plug staffing gaps, but effectively onboarding these temporary workers requires some unique considerations. This blog outlines key areas – from condensed orientation to expediting EMR access – that hospitals and clinics should focus on when integrating travel nurses to maximize their productivity.