How to Overcome Medical Practice Risk by Keeping a Close Eye on Periodic Job Description Recast Amidst Ever-Increasing Staff Churn
Medical Practices Should Never Under Estimate The Importance Of Periodic Job Description Update
Illumination Curated Publication initially publicized this article on Medium!
Employers are laboring to sustain their organization's competitive edge in our modern and fierce era.
For every business or operation, resourcing personnel and ensuring they stay loyal to that organization is one of the, if not the, most influential factors for their survival. That is precisely why every employer today needs and must be able to periodically design, outline, and specify the set of talent and skills their business demands. Concomitantly they should be able to regularly reset qualification criteria for every job position they intend to fill.
That is called the Job Description!
A job description helps employers strategize and allot the right individuals with the right personalities, talents, and skills to the proper position within their organization. It also ensures a clear reflection of the employer's expectations of the employee, hoping to maximize mutual understanding and a healthy work environment.
Having a job description for every position and skill set is just as important, if not more, for medical practices of all sizes.
According to a report published by the American College of Physicians in 2012, not many small medical practices had a clear job description. Although this report is relatively old, I should find more current statistics.
Reportedly, one of the most prevalent reasons for such a shortage is a need for more job description writing literacy by those medical practices.
Job descriptions are crucial to medical staff recruiting and retention and provide a guideline for fair employee payment, training, and performance assessments.
Having a clear job description also ensures a more explicit establishment of realistic mutual expectations. And it helps create a better rapport between medical practice managers and the staff. Thus, it will maximize employee retention and minimize the possibility of workers leaving for better and more relevant jobs.
Medical Staff Churning and its Impacts on Medical Practice
Medical staff churning and faulty retention are global issues. Almost every employee in the healthcare arena expects better pay and a better and more flexible work environment.
Staff churning is a costly undertaking for medical practices. According to a report, the cost of turnover can reach as high as $75,000 per employee.
One can find a multitude of reasons that contributes to medical staff turnover. Those include anything from working conditions, and burnout, to specific vulnerabilities such as bad strategies and discriminatory policies.
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Regular Updating Job Description Must be Part of Every Medical Practice Operation
As we cruise through time, generations, expectations, and socioeconomic statuses also change. With that transition, so does the need for job descriptions for businesses and medical practices.
For instance, with the recent socioeconomic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and as the economy for change seemingly tries to recover, employers are again boosting recruitment efforts. But, the employees prefer to work from home (at least partially). Thus the job descriptions those employers had in place before the pandemic will no longer cut it for the striving medical practices.
That is, precisely why, the new job description ought to meditate on these latest facts.
Any job description revision must reflect a role's duties and responsibilities to the pinpoint. And if intended to be competitive should emphasize offering remote work prospects. That will clear the way for medical practices to gain access to a broader talent pool while eliminating those who do not qualify.
A Stat poll conducted by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) on November 2022 briefly reflects the recent trends in job description update routines among medical practices.
The MGMA report indicates that over 58% of organizations recently updated job descriptions. While 42% still lag on such a vital task, nonetheless, it is a significant trend in the positive direction.
One thing worth noting is that the essential topics of job description revision among most medical practices included those for medical assistant, front desk, patient contact, and care coordinator positions.
The report focused primarily on introducing a hybrid work model to their practice. Introducing the hybrid work model helped relieve some of the administrative duties from the medical assistance list of responsibilities. It primarily did so by reassigning them to the front desk, patient contact, and coordinators who can also complete those tasks remotely.
Ways to Increase Happy Medical Staff through Better Job Description
Strategies to increase medical staff retention are unique to individual medical practices and their vision, mission, and organizational culture. However, some ways to help reduce medical staff turnover generally include prioritizing critical leader communication. It also manages how frequently healthcare leaders inform their team members about corporate reforms and job description modification options.
Likewise, Building employee career paths, focusing on engagement, and using the right tools also help significantly reduce medical staff churning.
In general, revising and reforming job descriptions, in particular, can be time-consuming and administratively burdensome. That comprises anything from designing, writing, approving, strategizing, and implementing tasks and roles. That increases with the increasing medical practice size and the diversity of organizational structure.
However, such a task has become less strenuous with the vast and diverse cloud-based technologies, including web-based document-sharing platforms. But, despite such progress, we still have a lot to do in the future.
Access to a hybrid work environment is also vital in keeping the organization updated on job description competitiveness.
A hybrid system not only directly helps sustain medical staff retention. That also improves the ease of job description regular maintenance and update, something vital in staff churning deterrence.
The hybrid work model allows every medical practice member to independently collaborate via real-time coordination, whether they contribute in person within the facility or remotely over the virtual cloud.
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