The Problems with Hospital Staffing

A large community hospital is having difficulty staffing and retraining staff. There are more problems according to the article I was handed during class. The hospital is making unfair decisions, for example, the hospital is deciding to raise community hospital employee’s paychecks, but keeping patient’s costs the same. Additionally, the employees are starting to second guess the decision of working there since they changed the hospital from urban to rural. Many more unwise decisions are being made at this hospital.

The alternatives are many. The first alternative is raising the patients’ costs along with the paycheck raises. Limiting the unnecessary remodeling is also a decision made according to the other alternatives are raising the hospital rates more often, have more full time employees, changing the hospital’s classification back to being urban, cut off the unnecessary short term items, and keep the early work for the ambulatory surgery project and upgrades to the temperature and electrical systems in mind.

The consequences would be an uneven ratio of employee paychecks to patients’ costs which gives less money for the hospital to spend on more useful things/tools needed. Due to the hospital not raising the patients’ costs they are getting less money back then what is spent.Because the hospital is going rural, the staff doesn’t want to work at a small place, so helping train/re-train staff is slower. Medicaid benefits will be lost due to the hospital going rural as well. Another effect of changing the hospital from urban to rural would also have less people coming into that hospital. Raising rates more often may cause confusions. Hiring full time employees may tire them out causing them to have/make bad medical performances due to the lack of energy.

However, there are some positives in this staffing issue. If they change the hospital to urban again, there will be more staff either returning or coming in because they like working in bigger hospitals. Cutting off the unnecessary purchases give the hospital better chances of staying in the budget range. In addition, you will also have more than enough money left over for any extraneous, or random staff needs.

The best course of action would be to change the hospital from rural to urban again, and raising patients’ costs along with having more full time employees. These were made because staff would be more stable, full time employees can help train/re-train the staff and help make a better, more experienced staff, and last but not least raising the patients’ costs along with the paycheck raises will help even things out and get the same money you’re putting out.

The overall problem with this hospital is not being able to keep their staff at a stable amount. The cause of this would be all the changes they have been making. The number one change they shouldn’t have made was changing the hospital to rural. Staff doesn’t want to work at a small hospital. According to Becker’s Hospital, the hospital’s with less beds tend to have less staff. For example,hospital’s with 6-24 beds have 98 staff members and hospital’s with 25-49 beds have 169 staff members. That information is to show that smaller hospitals have less staff. So, if this hospital wants to keep their staff and maybe get more staff members than they should go urban again.